Indigo Mommet
by Beldam
Summary: Batman had been in many bad situations over the years. Usually, everything he needed to solve them was somewhere on his belt. So why he suddenly needed the Joker's help to protect the Gotham the clown was on a mission to destroy, he'd never know.
1. Chapter 1

"Really?" said the Joker.

The Batman just stared at him from across the room, blood covering up all the skin his torn up outfit couldn't anymore. The Joker just stared at him, green eyes wide and crazy, spinning like kaleidoscopes in the flashing lights of the city.

"Does it look like I'm joking?" the Batman replied gruffly, cringing and pressing his rib up to keep it from digging down into his lungs. It didn't help much. What was worse, he had less than a second to regret using that particular turn of phrase before the joker cackled out into night. That laugh of his even drowned out the city.

The Joker decided in that moment it would be a good idea to test the rope he was suspended upside down by, arms and legs knotted and bound, by twisting himself about inside it. One of the threads snapped in retaliation, making him drop a good three inches, and his laughter just got louder.

That was all he did, wasn't it? All he was, was a laughing man.

"Didn't think you had it in you, Batman!" he cackled. "Maybe _you_ should be the comedian."

"You're not funny."

"You just don't get the joke."

"And what's the joke?"

More laughter.

_One rule, Bruce. Follow it._

"Well obviously I can't tell you!" said the green-eyed man. "You can't explain the joke or else it's not funny anymore. But you'll get it eventually." The Joker twisted around in his binds again so his captor could see his back, and he moved his hands together to make a heart shape—an upside down one from his position. "Because you and I are meant for each other."

Batman looked longingly at the rope the Joker was suspended from. One shot. He wouldn't even need to concentrate. He could just walk over there and sever the threads by hand if he wanted to and this would be over. He sighed in defeat in the end because…there had been a reason. There was definitely a reason somewhere, though God knew where now.

"So?" Batman sighed.

"Batman, I am flattered, but ya see, I don't do kids parties."

"If you don't agree, I'll kill myself," he muttered, half meaning it at the time. How could he say something like that? What was he thinking? If this was anyone of the other scum he fought on a daily basis, he would never have done this. Ever. Because you didn't trust scum. When given the choice, you didn't expect them to spare you. You expected them to scream JUMP. That was the thing, though. He got the Joker in a sick way—he understood what the hell happened in his sick little mind better than anyone even if that really just meant skimming the surface of a vast ocean of Crazy. But the Joker, for all that, would be the last person in the world to say, 'jump.' And that was the sick thing. The joker blinked, then grinned, stretching his grotesque red lips to their limits.

"We both know you wouldn't do that," he said, though his voice had a strange sort of desperation to it. "You and me—we need each other. You would never jump over something so petty."

Batman quietly walked to the side of the building and stood with his toes over mid air. By the time he had removed both his cape and utility belt, the Joker was swaying with glee. Apparently this sort of craziness was what the Joker likened to sex. Batman immediately regretted indulging him. This was insane. What was he doing?

_What _are_ you doing?_

"And they call me crazy!" the green-eyed man laughed. "You are something else! Oh, oh, I have a joke for this! You're really _batty_!" He burst into shrill laughter even before he was done saying it.

_You don't even know, you lunatic._

He put his foot out over the ledge and closed his eyes. Damn, if he jumped without any of his utility he'd really die. This would be it.

_He's right about you._

Was he really doing this? Damning the whole city to madness over something so stupid? And right after he'd just gone through all the effort to catch this guy **again**. Even if it was just a merry-go-round game, it meant something to him to go chasing after the bastard again and again. Even for a day, keeping the Joker off the streets was almost all that mattered to him. Though he was beginning to wonder whether all the Joker lived for was getting caught by him. If that were so, maybe jumping would be the best option after all. It would end this loop once and for all.

Batman leaned forward out into the air, wondering what it was like to hit the ground. A bat without wings was pretty pathetic.

"**No."**

The man yanked himself back as fast as possible and stumbled into safety, snapped back to reality by him of all people. He looked to the Joker, and was met with a face that was so _smotheringly, smoulderingly_ sober it was enough to burn.

"**I'll do it,"** the Joker said, voice low and deep. Batman's ears ached just from knowing how different that was to the loon's usual hysteric voice. "**Don't jump**."

Batman indulged a smirk.

"Why do you care so much?"

"You're my better half. What am I supposed to do without you?"

Batman couldn't think of an answer that wasn't completely ironic.

"Wear a nice suit," he said to the green-eyed man. "Preferably not in purple."

"How do I get down from here?"

"You'll figure it out."

All the Joker's sobriety was lost to the night just like that.

"That's my bat," he whispered.

Barman turned his back on the hanging man and pulled his discarded pieces back on. It was almost like he was reattaching limbs--the fact that he'd taken them off at all. Some blood dripped onto the floor as he disturbed his wounds while pulling his cape back on, and he didn't listen to the Joker hissing in silent delight. When the man clad in black turned to quip, naturally all that was left was a purple jacket with knife cuts inside it. But there was a sound in the distance that told him the owner wasn't far. After that, Batman really did jump, but that time it wasn't to his death. It was into the darkness that protected him, and where not even that impossible laughter could find him.

* * *

If you happen to be a fan of DBZ and have read my only other fic on this site, then you may have seen this coming: I have no idea where this is going! Yay! I know what I'm doing for the next chapter (if I don't change my mind. I dunna.) But yes...I'll entertain you as best as possible. Yes. This does sort of serve as an intro chapter, so it might be a little...bitch if I didn't get my act together. Dammit.

By the by, it's very hard to write the joker. Very. Very hard. It's near impossibble to write a person you can't comprehend, so i think i may have gotten myself in deep with this one. Well, that's what happens when you abide the stream of thought. Anyway, thanks for reading this oddball chapter!


	2. Chapter 2

He didn't know why he'd brought the stupid gun. What was he thinking, anyway? This went against all his ethics, vague as they were these days, and the painful thing was he'd gotten it specifically because when he'd seen it in the shop window it had all but screamed "Don't F*** With Me". It was exactly what he'd been going for, but when a guy in an outfit like his walked about toting a gun that seemed like it had been made from a modified bazooka, the aforementioned was not the first impression one got. The Joker knew, good and well, that he would never use the stupid thing to begin with, so in the end the 10,000 dollar chunk of metal and gunpowder ended up just being a shiny prop for the Joker to 'oo' and 'aw' over upon seeing it and snicker a little at how bad it looked juxtaposed to the freaking _Batman_.

Frankly, it pissed Batman off.

It was because of this, in part, that he continuously pressed the gun's nose spitefully into the small of The Joker's back, as though that somehow made it more threatening. When after another warning jab the Joker purred at him, he became aware that this was not having the effect he was going for.

Screw ethics. He was already regretting not loading the bastard.

He'd picked the Joker up from an alley, in the part of Gotham that even his reach just barely grazed, in his Porsche. It was his least conspicuous car, and there was no way he was going to go in the batmobile. He'd already taken the precaution of switching the license plate out to a fake one, so no one foolishly though Bruce Wayne and the Joker were in league, since people could be stupid like that.

At first, The Joker had been nonplussed by the presence of a luxury vehicle pulled up right in front of him. Then he'd pulled out the joker venom and Batman had to all but kick the door open and scream for him to get in before he realized who it was. Even then, he hesitated before putting the venom away, and even when he did, he did so with a reluctant pout.

The Joker was wearing a three piece suit, as per usual, pinstripes going down it and Bruce had tried and failed to get him to not wear purple. The minor, pathetic triumph was that he managed to convince him to not wear a green dress shirt: he'd worn an indigo blue one instead.

"Wear this," said Bruce, forcing an ear piece into the Joker's ear, not impressed with his faux obliviousness. "It's a two way radio, so we'll be able to hear one another."

"What?"

"And you will be reading this," he went on and thrust the speech he'd painstakingly put together with Alfred into the Joker's hands, even knowing it would probably go to waste. "Do not screw it up."

The Joker narrowed his eyes in scrutiny of the speech, flipping it over a few times as though he'd never seen such a strange thing. You'd think the man would have been around more mirrors.

"I am confused, Batsman."

"Batman," Bruce growled. "And I am taking you to a press conference explaining why you are such a lunatic. And that you are going to aid the police in trying to understand the workings of the truly insane criminal mind."

"Well, then, that's their first mistake." The Joker hooked his arm around Batman's neck, pulling their faces uncomfortably close. Bruce could hear the way the Joker sucked on the inside of his cheek between words, pulling at the outlines of his smile. The erratic heartbeat pulsing through the Joker's neck. And most of all, the vestigial laughter thrumming in the Joker's throat. "They think there are 'workings' to people like us."

"We aren't the same."

"But see," the madman went on, ignoring Batman's interjection, "those _regular _people are the one's with workings. They have cogs and springs and things that you can just," the Joker clenched his fist in front of Batman's face, nails piercing his palm, "throw a spanner into. But you and me—we're different, see? We're the ghosts in the machine. We don't have bits and pieces—we can't be deconstructed and broken down. See, the thing with us is, we just _are_. And we just _do_. The Batman ought to know that more than anyone." The Joker grinned, and Bruce could feel him breathing between his clenched teeth. "If you could think of a good reason for what you do anymore, you'd have long given up on screwless guys like me."

The Batman swallowed, trying not to breathe in the Joker's dirtied air. The man's breath smelled of sickly mix of candy and sulfur--simoltaneously pungent and sweet. The man wasn't wrong—about his own mind. There'd never been any particular reason or rhyme to the laughing man's actions. There'd only been actions. And the Batman, who'd always been involved. Who'd always been both the answer and the cause. Who'd always been...there. He shut his eyes for a second, then concentrated on the road again and elbowed the Joker away from him.

"I don't care whether that's true or not," he said with slow consideration. "Either way, just for today, you will have a conscience. Understood?"

The Joker stared at Bruce, then with an abruptness that made the man have to force down the reflex to punch something, he burst into laughter and slapped his knee.

"You kill me, Bats!" he said gleefully. "You slay me!"

"I'll be slaying you right now if you don't shut up," Bruce hissed.

"I would never have guessed myself Gotham's humanitarian. I know I put a lot of smiles on everyone's faces…brought a bang to the usual disquieting quietness, and I thought I was doing a little good. But to get a reward for it… . I think…the person I have most to thank is…you."

"Be quiet," said Batman. "Barely anyone knows you're showing. The press was told we'd just be having a discussion with someone who was tuned to the workings of the criminal mind."

"Ohhh," said the Joker. It was not a sound of conviction. "Then won't I be arrested or something?"

"Well, that's nothing new, is it?"

"I could use a holiday I suppose. Feel my neck. I have so many knots I could run my own balloon animal shop." Bruce didn't indulge a reply, not that the Joker paid him any mind. "So, uh, you have ulterior motives right?"

"Why would you say that?"

"You're not the knight in obsidian armour everyone seems to think you are," the Joker sneered. "You might have good reasons, but you always do bad things to get there. Am I right?"

"No," lied the Batman. "But if something does go wrong, just go with it."

"I'd rather go with you."

_You will not kill this man, Bruce. _

"Easier said than done," he grunted to himself.

They stopped where the conference was being held and Batman shoved the Joker's shoulder with the gun just for the sake of it.

"Get out," he said. Why was he not surprised when the Joker pouted and slouched in his seat.

"I don't want to," he said. "I'm turning down my award."

"Get out, Joker," Bruce repeated. He spotted the yellow daisy pinned to the man's lapel and realized it was best to get rid of all the clown implements; safety precautions as it were. "And take off that flower. You're not going to venom anyone."

The Joker sneered. "Are you going to wave your little gun at me?

_The _stupid _gun._

No. No. No. He wasn't going to be reduced to screaming loon just because the Joker new how to grin his nerves. He needed to go about this like an adult. He needed to be the mature one.

He squeezed his eyes shut.

He needed to stop making it sound like the Joker was his child. Boy, that somehow felt as though he was issuing some kind of challenge to himself. When did that happen?

"If you do not obey everything I tell you," he said sternly, "I will never associate with you ever again."

The Joker stared on for over a minute, every painted muscle still, and then he uttered in a miserable little voice, "Why are you being so mean to me?"

"Just do it."

The Joker did what he was told then began to get out of the car. Funny how the only thing the Joker could be swayed with was also the only person who was looking for what made him weak.

"I don't know why you keep acting like I'm some kind of infectious disease," the clown sighed.

"You are."

"Contagious, am I?" said the laughing man proudly and Bruce's shoulder's hunched in disgust.

"You're more like cancer," he corrected himself.

"Ask yourself this then, Bats. Consider it a favour from me to you. If this was any other 'bad guy'," said the Joker, leaning over the open car door his arm on the edge, his eyes expectant and mocking, "would you find it so easy to trust them? By the way, cancer spreads too. Throughout your whole self, even your soul. We have the same soul, you and me--" He smiled, and it was a smile both lucid and knowing, "--cancer and all."

The very assumption caused bile to rile up the inside of his throat and he had to clench his teeth to keep it in. So what if he thought others were more likely to backstab him, to freeze his car, to send a flock of flightless birds at it, so what? And, sure, he 'trusted' in the Joker's twisted incorrigibility, in his insistence on doing the same thing over and over, the same way he trusted in his own. He had faith in their cycle, and the Joker's perpetual promise that he'd keep Batman fighting until the only ones the Batman had any ability to fight were his own demons. But he was so used to it that while they were no means friends, their conversations were almost amiable enough that they were only on the fringe of being enemies. Admitting it to himself made his throat burn with loathing for both himself and the man who was making him this way. Or at least make him realize that this had always been the case. But he would never admit it. Not until the scum of Gotham finally pulled him into the ground.

The Batman leaned towards the Joker, his teeth bared until you could see the edges of his gums, and made it as clear as he possiby could that he was not laughing.

"_You_ don't have a soul," he stated, leaning further towards the Joker with every syllable until his head was physically sticking out the car and the Joker had to retreat half a foot to keep their foreheads from bumping, "_you_ are a criminal, _you_ are a monster, _you _are a madman."

"You're in broad daylight."

Batman slammed the door of the car shut abruptly as he could and took off down the street, knowing full well that the Joker was cackling away on the sidewalk. How could he have been so careless? He was lucky no one had been paying attention or God knew what would have happened. His publicity was inherently bad, true, but he didn't know if he could take propaganda stating he was palling about with his arch-enemy.

He skid to a stop twenty blocks away—close enough to be able to get there in only a few minutes if anything went awry, but far enough that he wouldn't be suspicious. He left the car and hid on top of an apartment roof, shrouded in the pale shadow of the chimney. He pulled the portable monitor that had been routed to receive the video feed of the cameras inside the conference hall and switched it on. It was already bustling.

He was quickly regretting giving the Joker such a large audience.

The Joker appeared abruptly on one of the cameras, his expression both nonplussed and amused. There was even a moment where he almost looked human—it took place about five seconds before he made a grab at one of the officers (thankfully one of the ones who knew about his guest appearance) standing around and grinned at him maniacally without saying a word. The officer gritted his teeth and led the Joker to the front of the hall with a painful reluctance. His hand gravitated just above his gun and his trigger finger kept twitching, not that Batman could blame him. Nonetheless, if the Joker's life was threatened he'd have to cut this whole thing short, and that wasn't in the cards. Unless, of course, the Joker pulled an extra one from his sleeve.

He could hear the crowd in the conference hall beginning to speak quickly through the Joker's ear piece, confused now because they couldn't believe their eyes. Batman almost wondered if he'd walked nonchalantly in there like the Joker had, people would be just as unsure. One would think they'd have a little more conviction in regards to perhaps one of the most recognized faces there ever was.

"I think they like my suit," the Joker's voice crackled in Batman's ear.

He rolled his eyes.

"I don't think that's it."

"You don't know, though, do you? You can't even see their faces."

"Yes, I can."

On the screen, the Joker stopped and looked around a little, before looking up and right into one of the cameras installed in the corner of the room. He had the expression of someone who knew that, no matter what they were actually able to see, they were looking right into you, and that you were looking right back.

"Want me to take off my jacket?"

"Get moving. We don't want a riot to break out."

"You're really just raining on my parade today, Bats. What did I ever do to you?"

Batman's teeth grinded together until they might as well have been flat. How could someone be so maliciously oblivious to everything? To the whole world? It was as though the Joker wasn't even living there—he was in a place all his own, with Bruce standing right outside the door.

The officer took the Joker to a podium at the front of the room and gave him a threat that he received with a relatively blank expression before walking away. Batman felt sorry for every one of the people in that room, but it was the only way. How did someone who always had a plan Z end up having to work his way up through the worst possible scenario before he could find the best possible solution? Maybe his problem was he thought too much. Maybe he just needed to _do_.

He didn't even manage to catch the slip of thought, even as it slid through his consciousness, gumming up the works. He only realized it had come to mind when it occurred that he'd heard something similar many times before.

_He really is a disease._

"Is this supposed to be funny?" said one of the reporters in the crowd once everyone had settled down. If his expression was anything to go by, he was not one of the ones amused. "We were told we'd have an expert talking to us—not an impersonator."

"Impersonator?" echoed the Joker.

"What does someone who dresses up as a serial killer for a living have to tell us about crazies that we don't already know?"

"Well, that question would make a lot of sense," said the Joker, steepling his fingers, nodding his head and happily going along with the show, "if it weren't for the fact that I am a 'serial killer' for a living."

The reporters in the crowd seemed confused for a second. It didn't take long before the man who'd made the statement went sheet white, his skin almost the colour of the Joker's.

The uproar followed shortly after. Some people were just screaming angrily at whoever they thought could discern their words, others bolted towards the doors, though the police had closed them and were telling everyone to calm down even though you could tell they were frightened too. The Joker could, apparently, get a place spiraling into Bedlam just by being there.

"It's the suit," the laughing man stated. "It's driving them crazy."

"You think that's what's doing it?" said Bruce. He pulled a device from his belt, a thin black circle with a button that he pressed quickly. A screech went into his ear at the same moment it echoed through the conference hall as he sent feedback through the Joker's mic, and everyone quieted down simply because they realized they could do little else. It really paid to have resources sometimes.

"Listen, I'm just here to read my acceptance speech and I'll get out of here," said the Joker, garnering gazes that managed to be more perturbed than horrified, "so, if I get this done now, you can get happily home to your little families and die another day. I'm just saying."

The people in the conference room looked at one another uneasily, at the policemen, and at the Joker, and strangely enough they decided to trust all those factors and what kindness each of them possessed and sat down.

"Okay, let's see this." The Joker looked at the speech and pressed it out onto the pedestal so he could read it. "Alright, here I go. Uh, 'you may know me from the news'—no, really? I never thought the people in this city were too bright, but I think they'd notice me." Bruce realized as soon as he heard that that there was no way the Joker was going to take this seriously. He was right. The Joker went on, chopping bits out and skipping bit altogether while he talked, without the slightest regard for how incoherent it made him sound. "'I am deeply…' yadda yadda yadda, not interesting, '_recent crimes'_. Hello, what's this?" he said, and gave the paper further scrutiny. "'Because I am aware of the recent heinous crimes of the criminal organization _Multiply_, I have decided to offer my services to the Gotham police department in order to put these villains behind bars.'" He stopped then looked up at the camera, and the Batman instinctively started to wave his hands in front of the screen to try and get him to stop. "What is this?" He held up the speech to the camera, crimson lips pulled low. "Is this why you haven't been showing up on time lately? You've found someone else? You've…you've been _cheating_ on me? I…I can't even…" He shook his head and made his lip quiver theatrically. "I'm hurt. And…and…very hurt."

"Would you be quiet?" Bruce snapped. "They're not supposed to know I'm talking to you."

"Eh, we'll chalk it up to the voices. They think I'm crazy anyway."

"You are crazy!"

"Hey, you, in the nice suit. The one that's almost on par with mine." The Joker pointed to a meek looking man young cowering in the far corner with his head in his hands. If he hadn't wet himself before, chances were he'd done it now. "Can you clear this up for me?"

"Please. Allow me to fill you in."

The Joker blinked when a man dressed all in black stepped almost protectively in front of the man in the suit. The man was tall, with pitch black eyes and red hair that was slicked back over his head. His face was rough and long, his eyes and cheeks aristocratic in definition, yet his expression was frigid. It was as though he was frozen and burning at the same time.

"We are Multiply," he said, his voice gruff. He pulled a strange looking gun with blue rings going up and down the nose from his back and aimed it squarely at the Joker. And the Batman had thought his gun looked like a bazooka. "The newest tier in Gotham's hierarchy, and it's most powerful. We are the usurpers of the helm of darkness. And we," his eyes flashed, "are the ones who will judge you."

The Joker narrowed one eye in skepticism, then hunched his shoulders so he could whisper through the ear piece. "Egad." Ironically, the expression on his face all but screamed 'crazy alert'. "It's like the chicken joke all over again."

"Stay calm, Joker," said Bruce. "We were expecting this to happen—this group's been proclaiming its hate for you for weeks. Your name's been in every one of the murders they've committed. We figured we might have a chance at catching one of their members if we brought you into the open. Just try to talk to him. See if you can get him to explain himself."

"Ha," the Joker laughed, and Bruce wasn't sure if he'd heard him or not. "_Multiply_. Sounds like a toilet-paper brand. So, uh, what's your gimmick? Exploding bathroom mints?"

The man with red hair stumbled back as though he'd been hit before he bared his teeth warningly at the Joker. His trigger finger was tightening—Batman wasn't sure whether it would be good or bad if he decided to shoot. "Aren't you in tune with the world around you? Haven't you watched the news? Read the papers? Aren't you aware of the terror we've instilled in the hearts of every citizen of Gotham!?"

The Joker snorted. "That would be like a celebrity watching their own movie."

"Haven't you ever heard of a premier…!?" Batman hissed.

"We'll prove ourselves to this city, finally," the man went on, "by not only killing the most feared man in Gotham, but by taking his place! Now," he turned his back to the Joker and looked at the innocent people who were gaping all around him, and grabbed the poor man in the nice suit for the sake of having a hostage. It was not that man's day today, was it? "Everyone get on the ground! Or today will be the last day you ever see the sun."

The fear in everyone's eyes proliferated to the point that even as they fell to their knees and bowed their heads to the floor, they looked as though they were crying. Of course they were. They were trapped in a room with two parties known exclusively for their violence and instability. None of them thought they were making it alive.

Batman swallowed. He hoped to God the Joker didn't do anything stupid—he shouldn't have put the lives of all these people in his hands to begin with. But, damn it, damn it, damn it, he'd trusted him to make things work. With his only shred of naiveté, he'd trusted the Joker not to knock anymore screws loose out of the both of them.

Where had he conceived such a dumb idea?

"Did you hear that?" the Joker said to him, the calmness in which he stated it making his chest tense. "This guy is cramping my act."

"Don't do anything," Batman warned, his voice strained as he tried to think up a plan of action that the Joker would fall neatly into.

"Look at him," he hissed, his eyes narrowed on the man, who was still busy getting the guns from the cops in the room and warning everyone to obey if they wanted to live. "Waving that thing around. Bet it doesn't even have a bang sign in it. What sort of gun doesn't have a bang sign in it? I'll tell you. A bad one. From China. Where the _squealers_ live."

"Don't do anything, Joker," Bruce repeated, hoping he sounded severe enough to curb the laughing man's misplaced enthusiasm. There was a few seconds of pause, and on the monitor he held he saw the Joker begin to calmly tap his fingers on the pedestal. Tap, tap, tap. He stood up straight.

"… I can't hear you."

"Joker," said Bruce.

"I'm ignoring you, now."

"Joker!" he yelled, then saw the man pull the device from his ear and heard it skitter on the floor. "Joker, answer me!" He snarled angrily and shot to his feet, latching the monitor onto his belt. He should have known better than to think this would end well. "Goddamn you!"

He jumped from the apartment roof, his cape spreading and catching the air, and he landed without sound in the darkness of an alley just beside the building. Feet thudding across the ground, he hurried to his car and jumped in, setting the monitor just beside him so he could glance at it every few seconds. The Joker had left the stage and was standing in front of the agent of Multiply, a smile on his face and a twinkle in his eye.

"You mean to kill me, sweetheart?" the Joker said between his teeth. "You mean to take my place? And why's 'at?"

"So we can prove," said the man, "that we can."

There was a bang in the earpiece loud enough to make Bruce let out a cry and toss his earpiece onto the passenger seat. The monitor had turned into a zigzagging layer of black and white haze. Still, it was only when heard the Joker's voice, loud enough that he could hear it from an ear piece to feet away, that he stepped on the gas.

"You mean to steal my punchline," the Joker stated, his voice hissing and crackling as the ear piece began to give out. "**You will not steal my punchline.**"

The car skid to a stop two blocks away from the hall—the roads were already too backed up for him to get there by driving. With all the agility he could muster, he swung himself up onto the balcony railings of an apartment and bounded from building to building, almost flying. He slipped past the commotion outside the hall, through the shadows like blood through water, before he appeared—and it could only be described as 'appearing'—standing in the center of the hall.

The Joker was standing with his back to the man, his shoulders hunched and fists clenched. In front of him, the agent of Multiply lay face down in a slowly spreading pool of his own blood. For him, Batman felt a tiny bit of remorse, not because he was dead, but because he had to die. The gun was on the far side of the room, smoke billowing from the muzzle.

On his knees, less than a foot from the Joker, a red welt on his wrist, was the man in the nice suit. His eyes were wide, appearance nigh indescribable, but whatever that expression was it was not one of fear.

"Joker."

The Joker turned to the Batman, breathing heavily, and as soon as he saw the man he was smiling his usual crazed smile. Seeing it was almost welcoming.

There was a hole the size of a dinner plate burned through the Joker's jacket, the ends of his clothes were singed, and he had a bloody knife in his hand. Whatever he'd survived, the chances were that he shouldn't have. Batman looked around him, seeing how some of the windows had been smashed to pieces, as the glass in the cameras had been, and there was a thin layer of dust on the floor and everyone standing on it as though the ceiling had come loose. It looked as though the room had been hit by a sonic boom.

Coming ever closer, the Batman could hear the wail of police sirens.

"Leave," he told the Joker though he knew full well the laughing man would know it to mean 'come'. With that, everyone turned to stare at him, finally noticing he was there. The police officers still in the room looked back and forth as though they weren't sure who they were supposed to arrest first. Or whether they should do anything at all.

The Joker snickered a little. His eyes were incredulous. Still, he heeded to the Batman and put the knife beneath his jacket.

"I like your hat," the Joker said to one of the men in blue on his way out, plucking said hat from the man's head and putting it on his own. He patted the man on the cheek gratefully. "Thanks."

The eyes of every person in the room followed him until he was gone.

The Batman waited a few seconds for his distraction to arrive, and as soon as the reinforcements burst in, he disappeared.

The Joker had managed to locate the car on his own and was already sitting slouched in the passenger seat. Batman would have preferred it if he'd just gotten lost somewhere in the city instead.

"You killed him," the Batman said, getting in.

"He was asking for it," said the Joker, wiping off his knife with the edge of the police cap he'd stolen. "I wanted to have him go out with a smile, but sometimes, you know, the world just plays you a wildcard." He tilted his head. "So, I was bait, eh?" he said. "For that guy."

"Nnn," the Batman confirmed. He started the engine.

He would have to get rid of the Joker one way or another.

Maybe he needed to ditch the car.

He could always get a new one.

"So, this _Charmin_--"

"Multiply."

"—what have they done to get you so involved?"

"The making large, crowded buildings look like Swiss cheese did it for me," said Bruce. "It helps that we have no idea who they are, why they're doing this, or where they come from. We just know them from the carnage."

_A little like you._

A part of him was surprised that the Joker didn't echo his thoughts. Instead, the white-faced man went on a tangent of his own. "And they hate me because…?"

"Who knows? They're just out to get you. So--"

"I'm the best lure. Right." He tutted. "There's those ulterior motives I was telling you about, rearing their ugly heads."

"You're just lucky you weren't killed," said Batman, and he was only half aware at the time who he was giving those words to. "The hole in your jacket could just as easily have been in your skull."

"You thought I was going to _die_?" the Joker said mockingly. The way he made it sound, you would have thought it was absurd consider him even a little human. "I appreciate the concern, Batsman."

The Batman's grip tightened on the steering wheel. "I'm dropping you off at Arkham."

"Still…the _nerve _of that guy…trying to steal my punchline." The Joker pressed his face against the window, and his breath made mist spread in and out from his mouth. The police cap made darkness play across the sharp edges of his face and on the outlines of his lips. "My punchline. You don't really see people with that brand of stupid this day 'n age."

"You sound angry," Batman observed, mostly because he was still trying to gauge the exact breadth of the man's spectrum of emotions.

"You're joking with me, Bats," the Joker snickered, as though for irony. He turned to the Batman with his grin spread to the edges of his narrowed eyes, half his face shrouded in the shadows of the city and his hate, save for the white glare of his teeth. "I'm **furious**."

* * *

I think I may have found a plot! Astounding! This has never occurred in my life time before. **I am not joking with you.**

Anyway, to those who asked, this won't be yaoi. While I do read with the goggles a lot, I think I should reel in my usual inclinations and write this as it would be--with Joker on some strange verge of asexuality. But, mind you, this is the Joker were talking about. It's going to have a few subliminal slashy vibes, because, you know, the Joker is weird like that, but it won't end up with them in the sack, so you don't have to worry about it. Still, those that do have every right to squee over it if they get that feel. I don't have a problem with it.

Moving on, i think this is going to be some funny cross between canon (not that such a thing actually exists in the convoluted string of comic book continuity) and the Dark Knight. We'll see where that takes me.

Also, to all non-americans and americans who don't watch a buttload of tv or do a ton of shopping, Charmin is a toilet paper brand. Yeah.

Anyway to those who've read what I've written so far, to those who've commented, and those that added me to their various lists and such, the pure awesomeness that is you would make the universe implode if it was paying any attention. Thank you. ^__^


	3. Chapter 3

It wasn't often quiet on the streets of Gotham. Even on nights like those that came in the winter, where the roads were coated with snow and the wind chilled you through your bones, you could hear the brooding soul of the city, talking, and screaming, and beating every person to the ground. That night was strange in that it was the most silent Gotham had ever seen, as though the many heartbeats within had stalled. Until then, Batman hadn't even known there were cicadas in Gotham.

He gazed down from the precipice of a sky scraper, cloak billowing behind him and the ends becoming one with the night sky. Cinders flitted from the smouldering remnants of buildings, fireflies in their own right, and the soot and ash that trailed up with them shrouded the starless sky. The fire, even as it stood flickering and dying out, was blue, only turning violet, then red at the ends—Multiply's signature. A fire in Zero Gravity.

A five block radius—completely razed to the ground. No survivors. All that had made it was a building standing alone in the center of the obliterated circle, the source of whatever had caused the blast. Of course, whoever had been there would be gone by now. But that didn't mean that it wasn't worth checking out. Even if they were too late to change anything, at least there was always a chance of preventing this from happening again.

Batman leaned forward and allowed himself to be swept away by the night that was his.

Commissioner Gordon paced back and forth inside the building in the center of the blast radius. It had been decrepit to begin with, but the heat of the blast had charred a thin layer of the walls and ceiling and had caused most of the furniture left inside to spontaneously combust. He'd been waiting with due patience for the Batman's arrival, but the vigilante was uncharacteristically late. Even though Gordon had gone out of his way to discourage the rest of his team accompanying him to the building to look for some kind of clue as to what the heck was going on.

"Come on," he hissed, looking at his watch. "Where are you?"

He exhaled a sigh of relief when there was a rustle from what remained of the curtains by the glassless window standing behind him. Thank God for small miracles.

"Batman, what took you so—" Gordon let out a cry and threw himself backwards when his eyes met the Joker's insanely twinkling irises, the laughing man's many teeth shining to the point they seemed serrated in the dark. His hand went instinctively for his gun only for him to bump blindly into Batman's broad chest.

"Batman," he gasped. His eyes shot back to the Joker, who was only standing there, smiling, more like a caricature than an actual person.

"Don't worry," Batman explained, placing a steadying hand on Gordon's shoulder though his eyes focused on the Joker. "He's here to help us."

"What?" said the commissioner. "Him? Have you lost your mind?"

"He managed to lure one of Multiply out into the open long enough for me to get an ID on him. And he's decided he's got a bone to chew."

"And I'm just a _really_ trustworthy guy," said Joker loudly.

Both of the other two men looked at him, though Gordon's was in horror and Batman's was in irritation.

"Are you sure about this…?" Gordon hissed.

Batman paused. Truth be told, he wasn't a hundred percent sure. It wasn't as though the Joker was simple enough that he could just be reduced to numbers and statistics. Still, he had to make due with what he had.

"I am," he said, and he could see in Gordon's eyes the man took the words for truth.

"You know, we haven't been, uh, formally introduced," said the Joker, extending his hand in a gesture which, coming from him, seemed strange. Gordon blatantly ignored it.

"We know each other well enough," said the man, his glasses flashing. The Batman stared calmly at where Gordon's hands were held: they were shaking violently, but it didn't look like he had any intention of taking this chance to shoot the Joker to death.

"Come on, come on, please?!" said the Joker.

The commissioner's jaw went askew.

"James Gordon."

"James Gordon," the Joker echoed, moving his tongue along his palette as though he were tasting the name. "So, uh, James, Jimmy, Jimmy-Jim-Jim, Jim, Specs, it's been a while since I saw you last. And, uh, you're daughter," he snapped his fingers a few times, trying to jog his memory, "what's-'er-name. "

"Barbara!" said Gordon, taking a violent step forward. Batman grabbed him quickly and pulled him back. He would never understand, not entirely, how it would feel to have your child ultimately stripped and beaten miles away from you while you were unable to do anything in order to stop the culprit. The helplessness he understood, but that sort of anguish must have been unfathomable. And then being forced to curb that rage away from the person who'd tried to gouge a hole in your life, because the law _you_ protected, protected that person too. Even after all that time, the hatred Gordon must have felt towards the man that nearly took his daughter's life must have been beyond comprehension. When Barbara had been crippled, Batman had lost something too, rest assured. And he didn't know that he'd ever replace Batgirl for that very reason. And yet…that hadn't stopped him from laughing with the Joker about the divine mess of _everything_ once all of it was done.

When the commissioner turned his head as though to ask 'why' Batman just shook his head at him, only just mustering the will to maintain eye contact. The cop's shoulders fell and his voice dropped to a meager whisper. "Her name is Barbara."

The Joker snickered. "I remember she was quite the looker," he said. The Batman sent him a look, but he continued sardonically. "Maybe one day we can go dancing."

"You--!"

"Enough," said the Batman, and his voice echoed through the room, pulling dust loose from the ceiling. Both the Joker and the commissioner turned to look at him in response, surprised by Batman's insistence. The Joker didn't care, Bruce knew that much, but it seemed the commissioner had forgotten: people's lives were at stake, and this time, those people were more important than anything that could have happened in the past. Even what happened to Barbara. "We don't have time for this. Gordon, did you find anything?"

The commissioner pushed his hands beneath his glasses so that he could rub his eyes, then pointed to a large wooden board propped against the wall, half hidden beneath a singed yellow sheet. Curious, Batman went towards it and pulled the sheet away, letting moonlight streak down the rotten wood. An eyebrow quirked instinctively as a result.

"'Who's Laughing Now,'" read the Joker with the sort of inflection you heard in school children. The clown even attempted to make a sound effect for the smiley face drawn in red beside the long, drawled writing. He smirked. "What witty bags of witty wittiness."

"It's directed at him again," said Gordon, and the spite in his voice was painfully audible as he gave the Joker a sidelong glance. "It's probably because of him that this is all happening to begin with. With his head count, God knows how many psychopaths he's brought into the world."

"That may be true. There's more than one person operating this though. Also, the member that was…" the Batman paused, wondering whether he should say 'murdererd' or 'killed'. He went with 'killed'. Even the headlines had been confused about what to call it when the Joker took someone's life in the accidental process of saving others'. "Well, I ran a database check on his face. His name was Alkahest Promethia—"

"Or, as he's known in Japan, Awesome McCoolname," mumbled the Joker.

"—and he was a scientist."

"The weapons type?" said Gordon.

Batman shook his head. "The healing type. He'd been attempting to make an elixir of life—a cure for mortality--"

"Well, clearly he gets an 'F'," the Joker interrupted yet again.

"—but he was fired before he could make any headway," the Batman went on with undue patience. "He disappeared soon after."

"And then he was recruited by Multiply," said Gordon.

"Yes."

"Why would they need him, though?" He gestured to the rubble where there'd been buildings. "Saving people's lives isn't one of their priorities."

"It might have been for vengeance," said Batman.

"Or irony," said the Joker, laughter accenting his words. He cupped a handful of soot within his palms, then blew it, the remnants of fire flickering blue inside the dust. "I mean, living to lengthen lives, then deciding to shorten them…" he sneered. "Well, that's just good comedy."

"He must have had a vendetta against the Joker, though," said the commissioner, "or else why bother?"

"If he, or any of his family members, had been victims, it would have come up in a police or medical report. He was attacked a few years ago, but it wasn't by the Joker. Just some thugs," Batman replied. "There are other reasons. At the conference he stated that they wanted to 'take the Joker's place'. This could just be a crime group rallying for control of the city. If Gotham's underworld caught wind of the death of the Ace of Knaves, we have no idea what would happen." He shrugged. "For all we know, the leader of Multiply could just be using the people under his control for his own ends, and feeding them with lies to keep them satiated. I can keep digging into Promethia's background but I don't know that anything will come up."

"And you'll be keeping him around," said Gordon, unsubtly referring to the Joker, "until you get another bite."

"Ultimately, yes."

"Batman--"

"C'mon, Specs," said the Joker as he threw his arms about the commissioner. "I mean, it's all water under the bridge now, isn't it? I can walk, the kiddo can't, I can laugh it off, you're a grump. The sun still shines, the birds still sing, and let's face it; you still haven't had your day in the black light." He smiled dangerously and let their faces rub. "Not yet. So, learn from me, would ya? Smile!"

"Get off of me," said Gordon, and one could tell his fuse was running short.

"Joker," said Batman.

The laughing man looked up from the commissioner, for a moment draping himself over the cop even more heavily. When he didn't get a reaction out of the vigilante, he shrugged, put his hands in his pockets, and stepped away.

"You guys wouldn't know a good joke if a HA! hit you in the face."

"Right," said the Batman. He looked at the commissioner. "If anything comes up on either side, I'll find you. Until then, keep your eyes open."

"I know."

"And don't worry. This is only short term."

"You say that." Gordon took a breath and squeezed his eyes shut for as second. "I know you think you have this all under control, but in a situation like this, you have to promise to me you'll be--" He opened his eyes and he was standing alone in the moonlit room. "—careful."

Even the soot in the room thought the two disguised men were stills standing there—their footprints had been left as backwards silhouettes on the floor.

"Jeeze, that guy's a grouch," the Joker complained as he emerged from the bottom floor of the building with Batman already waiting at the car. "I'm doing a good thing here, and what do I get? Pouty faces. The problem with this city is that you can only get people to laugh by making them."

"Mmnn…" muttered the Batman. To be honest, he didn't know how the Joker had found him, since he'd made a point of going alone, but the Joker was a persistent guy and getting rid of him was a chore. Plus, knowing where the madman was on nights like this was always a good thing.

"Ugh." The Joker gurgled when he saw the Porsche, ready and waiting. Woe betide the man who thought the Batman wasn't always prepared. "This again? I wanna ride in the batmobile!"

"If you're going to come with me, then you either get this or nothing."

"Batcave?"

"No."

"…then at least put the top down."

Batman sighed, but did it anyway. In response, the Joker let out a squeal of delight and hopped inside with an enthusiastic grin, not that his grin ever failed to appear as much.

"You _have_ to let me go to the batcave!" said the Joker while they drove down the dark streets, his words being all but swept away by the billowing wind. "How else am I supposed to help?"

"If you can tell me, right now, why the flames leftover from the blast were blue, then--"

"Copper halides had been ground into the ignition—when it lit up, the boom was blue." He grinned cockily. "I organized a very colourful group of explosions on July 4th last year. Batcave, batcave!"

"Alright, that's it. Get out."

"Aww!" The clown pulled himself out of the top of the car. "You're not a good person, Batman. This is spousal abuse."

"Don't hurt anyone on the way back to your hole."

The Joker booed him, and the Batman in turn rolled his eyes and put his foot to the gas. He was relieved when he pulled into the batcave. He leaned his head against the seat and pulled in a deep breath. It was rare when this happened to him, but he wanted very much for the night to be over so he could return to his persona of Bruce Wayne, and no longer be the ruler of the night. And seeing the Joker as both an ally and a fiend was beginning to cause a fissure to spread down through the center of his chest. At least he hadn't been forced to be alone with the criminal today, or else his head would have imploded. Which was new.

The Joker had been popping in during Batman's crime fighting sessions at random for the last week, incessantly asking if anything had come up before rambling on about his own escapades, with only thin lines of coherence mixed in. Shaking him was always the hardest part, but eventually he'd be able to escape from that white face, feeling the gleaming grin burning into his back.

"Swank. Can I get a room here?"

Batman threw himself out of the car and spun to the trunk, and he was blinded by that very white face as it moved out of the shadows.

"What are you doing here?!" Batman yelled and snatched the Joker by his collar. When he slammed the man's back against the car he could hear him mutter something about scuffing the paint. "How did you _get _here!?"

"Hid in the trunk," the Joker sneered. "You should probably lock that." The Batman snarled and pushed him more roughly against the car. "Don't worry," the Joker went on, "my lack of x-ray vision indicates I can't see through metal to tell how we got from point A to point B." He winked. "Though I would love to see inside_ that_ vest."

The Batman growled between his teeth, shoved his enemy away from him in disgust, and started to walk off the car platform. There was no point in getting rid of him now. The damage was already done. And then there was one more thing.

He was exhausted.

"This place is as amazing as they say," said the Joker from behind, and while Batman moved soundlessly, the clown's heals clicked merrily along the stone floors. "Bats, I think it's about time we moved in together."

"Go home."

"Eh. I haven't really been feeling it in Arkham lately."

"That isn't your home."

"Arkham isn't my home like this place isn't yours," said the Joker, "in that it actually is your home."

Batman walked on into the computer chamber, punching one of the buttons on the control board, and the screens that covered the walls burst into blue light before images flickered past in a dizzying stream of colour. The Joker let out an awed 'ooo'.

"Are you leaving or not?" said Batman and sat down in the swiveling chair in front of the keyboard.

"Listen, Bats, I don't mean to harsh your mellow by introducing things like 'logic' into your though processes, but if you don't want me here, then why haven't you kicked me out?"

Bruce looked at the Joker as though the question was ridiculous, and then he let out a breath and looked back at the screens when he realized that it wasn't. "I have no idea…"

"So, uh, you keep all your data in this place, right? Do you have all the stuff on Awesome McCoolname on here too?"

"Yes."

"Is it voice activated? Computer, show me Awesome McCoolname!" His face fell when the computers didn't even blip. "Darn, you say it."

"That's not how it works."

"Computer," repeated the Joker, putting on an impressive mimickry of Batman's voice, "bring up all data on Alkahest Promethi!" In an instant, Alkahest's image flashed onto every screen, along with every piece of documentation on him ever, right down to his birth certificate. The Joker looked elated. "Ah ha!"

"Stop messing around with my things," said Bruce, tapping a sequence of keys, and the screens went blank.

"Come on, these guys have it in for _me_, after all. Just a peek?"

The Batman pursed his lips, and his knuckles clenched and unclenched on the keyboard, turning white beneath his gloves. The Joker's eyes bore down on him with all their might until finally he let out a breath and brought the images of Alkahest Promethi back up. The Joker clapped his hands together gleefully and leaned towards the screens, his green eyes flicking back and forth over every word and image. For a moment, he appeared deep in thought, lost in the pictures of his would-be killer, then he leaned forward and pressed the tip of his index finger to one picture in particular—the photo from Alkahest's autopsy.

"Well, hello," he said with an examining eye. "What's this?"

Batman furrowed his brows and looked closer, not wanting it to be known that he'd missed a single bit of information. His eyes scrolled down over lines of text, over every single pale little freckle on the Alkahest's face, until he was looking exactly at where the Joker's gloved index finger was pressed. He froze for a moment when something he saw in his peripherals hit him in the face like a slap.

Only a hair's breadth, but still stretching from one edge of Alkahest's lip to almost the corner of his eye was a scar. When one looked close enough, it looked as though the man were wildly smirking at the remainder of the world, having suffered the tremendous weight of the same line that made the Joker laugh.

"A Glasgow smile," stated the Batman dumbly.

"Half," corrected the Joker. "Mm, doesn't it make him look handsome? I think I'm in love."

"This must have been from when he was attacked, but it wasn't mentioned on his medical files. He must have repaired it himself," he said, ignoring the Joker's pestering. "It doesn't look like whoever did this did it all the way through. Something must have stopped them." He paused and swiveled to the Joker. "Are you sure you didn't have anything to do with this?"

"As much as I would love to take credit for bringing a smile to the face of a fellow man, this was all Gotham." He leaned over the control board and flicked a switch so the images of Alkahest began to spin around the screen. "But isn't this exciting? Clues, confusion, crazy, winding storylines! I feel like Nancy Drew!"

"I'm glad you find this so amusing. But this…this isn't what I'd call a coincidence."

The Joker grinned. "What's this?" he said, and put his elbows on the control board which preceded to wreak havoc on the screens. "The Batman believes in fate?"

"There's only reality," said Bruce. He promptly swatted the Joker away from the controls and kept him as far from it as possible. "Fate has nothing to do with it."

He stood up and looked at the Joker, seeing the man grin up into his shadow.

"Get back in the trunk," he said darkly. "We're going for a ride."

"Ooh, hoo, hoo, hoo!" laughed the Joker and bounded off to the Porsche. "Road trip!"

The Batman took a deep breath before he followed. He popped the trunk and watched the Joker as he slid gleefully inside. For a moment, his hands were frozen on the keys and steering wheel. Thoughts, many thoughts, rushed through him all at once, becoming lost and twisted into themselves, and then he turned on the ignition and the lights flashed brightly on the car's platform. He was sick of the blue flame and the black soot and wondering about the 'why'. He needed to find out, and find out now, what any of this had to do with anything else. When they emerged into the city, it was almost morning, and dawn light was creeping along the edges of the shadows buildings cast. It was that moment, that precious second, where Gotham belonged neither to the crusaders or the crooks.

It was neither a city of pure black or white: for that one second, it was the city of blue light. But who knew?

The Batman's lip twitched and he put his foot to the gas until dust flourished behind them and the Joker's laughter trailed through the like a comet's tail.

Maybe even that wasn't good enough.

* * *

I'm really starting to enjoy writing this—as in, I don't even have to think about it. It just happens. Which is cool, but not, because I'm presently rejecting my piece of original fiction. Dammit! It's probably because there's nothing pure or simple about the relationships that go on in Gotham. Everything is always a little twisted; which is my favourite thing to write. And also because it's the Goddamn_ Batman_!

I've actually even done research for this—though admittedly I had no idea what could make fire blue. I actually wikid an article on party poppers (yeah…), which eventually got me linked to an article on fireworks. And voila. This is why I love the internet.

Again, thanks to the readers, because you're too sick for words, and to everyone else (like who?)

The next update may be a bit slower (this update was abnormally quick, mind you) but bear with me, it will happen. This one was admittedly a little slow, but I think the next ones going to be more interesting...we'll see, huh? Anyway, thanks again!


	4. Chapter 4

Batman would never be a Superman. The reasons for this were simple enough. He didn't like primary colours, he didn't have the luxury of a conveniently placed phone booth, and he would never, ever be able to be as proud of his actions as Superman was his. Sure, they both had their codes of conduct and their mantras and 'one rule' and so on and so forth, but it had to be said. Superman would never do anything even close to what Batman was doing right now.

_I bet even I wouldn't have to do this if I could walk around all over the place with laser-beam eyes._

It was still cold as winter outside of the city since the sun wasn't quite hitting yet. The dust and sand must have felt easily like ice, seeing as how Batman was virtually freezing through his suit.

The Joker writhed with mock irritability on the dusty ground just to the side of the highway. As though tying the man up to begin with didn't already have all sorts of emotional baggage, he just couldn't be civilized for one second and make this easier for Batman. Not one. It was difficult to believe someone like the Joker could ever have amounted to anything more than a pest. And yet, the only reason this was even happening was because he very much wasn't.

"Ouch," the Joker grunted and turned his head to the side a little so he could see Batman in his peripherals. "A little rough there, Batman." He smirked. "Not that I don't like it that way."

"Shut up and take it like a man," hissed Bruce and he shoved his knee into the small of Joker's back. "If you didn't want this, you shouldn't have provoked it."

The laughing man's expression went abruptly sober and he went still on the dirt.

"Listen, Bats, I was just kidding. You're making me kind of nervous now."

"Would you shut up?" Batman got off him and yanked him to his feet by the binds he'd tied around his wrists.

"Now, is this all really necessary?"

"You should be flattered that I think you're volatile enough to need this," grumbled the Batman as he hit dust off the Joker's shirt. The Batman tried not to notice it, but he couldn't help it. The Joker had really taken to wearing indigo since the conference. That same shirt too. You could see the singe marks on the lapel as proof.

"Oh, I am," replied the laughing man. "I'm just wondering if the kink value was part of it too, or if you've just been missing me these past few hours."

"Do you want to get back in the trunk?"

The Joker pouted. "No."

"Good. Now let's hoof it."

The man with the white face stopped dead. The Batman had to keep himself from rolling his eyes at the man's mortified expression. You'd think the guy didn't walk to all his destinations anyway. Scratch that. Batman had no idea how the Joker managed to get anywhere as fast as he did, but whatever his mode of transport was the point was that he never had any issue about what path to take between point A and B. The vigilante didn't know what his problem was this time.

"Where are we going?"

"To Alkahest's lab—it was mentioned in his files. It's about five miles north of here."

"Why aren't we driving?"

"It'll be too hard to hide the car once we get there. This is better."

"But it's hot."

"You've been in the trunk for three hours," said Batman incredulously, "and you honestly expect me to believe that you're only now getting heatstroke at 2 degrees Celsius."

"Carry me?"

"No."

"But, please!"

"Alright, you're either walking with me or we're both going to stand right here until you change your mind."

The Joker's face scrunched in what Batman first thought was irritation, and then suddenly it morphed, lip curling upwards, and Batman realized it was, as it had always been, a smirk.

"Am I the only one who thinks that a clown and a bat having this conversation in the middle of Nowhere is hilarious?" he said. "Because I shouldn't be."

The Joker had danced on his last nerve, so he snatched him by his collar and started to drag him across the dusty landscape. He didn't care for the Joker's mewls of mock sadness, nor did the put-on squirming stir his heart. All it did was make the temptation to shove the Joker to the ground and take dash out of there all the more desirable. He swallowed down the urge as best he could. Usually he was all for good old fashioned detective work, but the sooner this was over with, the better.

The building became visible on the horizon after around twenty minutes and it had truly grown sweltering standing on the sands. It was just a big, foreboding shadow on the horizon initially, but as they drew closer it took shape. It didn't look like a medical facility, per se. In shadow, the tall, twisting smoke gaskets, the serrated points of the rooftops, and the black gleam coming off the barred and bolted windows, all made it seem like an abandoned hospital of the horror movie variety.

"We should have brought a virgin to sacrifice," the Joker observed.

"You should be right at home there," said Batman. "It could just as easily be a mad house."

"A madhouse for me to frolic in," the clown giggled. "Lift my sleeve. I'm getting goosebumps."

"Won't be doing that."

There were no security guards in the front, and after a quick scan, Batman couldn't find any security cameras. They walked all around the building's parameter, and the most they were able to find of a living person was an old bubblegum wrapper that had probably blown in from the city. It was either too good to be true or too horrible to believe.

"Why did we come here again?" said the Joker with a smirk. "It looks deserted."

"That can't be. I did some research before coming here—all my information points to this place still being active."

The clown snorted. "The internet clearly lies."

Batman wasn't sure whether to agree or not. Even still, they snuck in the hard way just to be safe. As in, squeezing between bars, sliding over roof tops, and pulling up grates. The Joker was unbelievably uncooperative the whole time, and Batman had to all but carry him through most of the obstacles. The man seemed determined to make the Batman kill himself. When he pointed out the obvious question of why, in a place with no people, they didn't just walk, Batman pointed out the equally obvious—everything was still in good condition. There was not a speck of dust or spiderweb to be found anywhere they'd been, even in the deepest, darkest corners of the place. Deserted or not, this place had been in use. Maybe not today or yesterday, but recently.

After traveling through the air vents for a little while (as they were always a good choice seeing as how Batman had never met anyone savvy enough to rig them) they stopped when Batman saw the word 'production' painted on a door in the room they were over.

"Wait here," he told the Joker as he pulled up the vent's grates. "I'll be back in ten."

"Let me come too," said the Joker. "I'll be good!"

"No, you won't."

"Semantics."

"Just do as I tell you for once in your life, alright?"

Joker stuck his tongue out at him just as he slipped through the open vent and landed easily on the floor below him. He looked around, hoping not to disturb anything by showing up unannounced. There wasn't a thing. Even the video cameras at the corner of the room were facing the floor, indicating that they were off. Someone really wasn't very safety conscious, were they? He'd even gotten himself ready to kick down the door if he couldn't pick it, but he wasn't even able to do that—it simply opened. The sheer lack of security made him shiver. What had happened to this place?

He kept near the walls in any case, having been startled way too many times in 'abandoned' places to let his guard down for one second. His cape made the softest of rustlings when he opened a door spanning down the hall way and a wind blew out. Air conditioning? He smiled at the little triumph. Someone _had_ been here. He went into the room cautiously, pulling out a neglecting to look for a light switch in favour of taking a small flashlight from his belt and holding it steady in front of him. He was standing on a long, metal ramp that lead over what looked like an assembly line, with a stopped conveyor belt and a large machine at its start. The machine had glass tubes on the sides that glowed with a faint blue light. Batman narrowed his eyes and leaned forward. And were those holes blasted through it, and most of the room, or was he completely losing it?

"Are you getting déjà vu or what?"

Batman spun around, the blades on his gauntlets flicking out as he snatched the intruder by his throat and held him down on the floor. He didn't know why he was surprised to see the madman grinning beneath him, hands raised above his head.

_Hands raised above his head._

"How did you get out?!" Batman hissed in bewilderment.

"Pfft, you tie knots like a boy scout," said the Joker with a wave of his hand. "I was challenging myself by _not _escaping."

"But you…!"

"Listen, you can just lie on top of me all day with your mouth hanging open or you can…" the Joker trailed off. "Nevermind. Just lie on top of me. I can work with that."

"Disgusting," Batman snapped and yanked himself to his feet. This costume was going into the incinerator for sure. He had enough spares that it wouldn't matter. One less outfit sullied by the Joker.

"What do you think?" said the Joker as he got up. "Awesome's base of operations or what?"

Batman nodded. Whatever they'd been producing in this room was certainly not medically affiliated—if radioactive fluids were still banned by the FDA, at least. The holes, on the other hand, seemed suspiciously similar to the swiss cheese buildings that were now studded around Gotham. Maybe after joining Multiply, Alkahest had come back to wreak vengeance on the place that had tossed him out. That didn't explain why this was the only place with holes, and why, even with all of them, the only thing that was seriously damaged was the machine. Laser guided Karma, maybe?

Batman contemplated sending Joker back to the vent, but it was pointless now. With the ropes untied, there would be nothing keeping the madman in. Maybe if he welded the vent shut…he shook his head quickly, ridding himself of the idea. It looked like they were stuck together.

"Keep walking," he murmured.

For once, the Joker didn't have a quip and just went with it. They had to step over some holes that had been melted into the ramp, but they didn't need to go very far before they were at its end and standing in front of a door marked 'control room'. This time, Batman had to jimmy it open in order to get inside. That, he thought, was a good sign.

The control room rivaled the Batcave in terms of pure technological advancement, the computers stacked by the walls and every one of the dozen or so screens state of the art. The control board consisted of three layers, the buttons on each different from the layer below it, and the floor was littered with cords and wires that sparked dangerously every now and then, as though they were still in the working fazes. It seemed somewhat more delicate than what Batman was used to, but he could deal. He sat down in front of the master monitor and turned the screen on. Naturally, the first thing he got was a password screen.

"Great," he murmured. He looked around him for some clue as to what he should type in, but the room was barren of anything remotely personal. Stupid scientists and their empty lives. "Any suggestions?"

"Mmm," the Joker said, "how 'bout 'Smile'?"

"Smile?" Batman echoed wryly.

"C'mon, Bats, indulge me here. It couldn't hurt."

He sighed. The Joker was right about that one. Expecting this to be a dead end until he could get something that could override the encryptions, he typed in the word and pressed enter. He was greeted instead with a welcome sign followed by a screen filled with files.

He gave the clown a look, and the Joker just smiled sheepishly and shrugged in reply.

"Lucky guess?"

"I'll just bet."

He looked through the documents, and when he couldn't think of a decent way to sift through what was relevant and what wasn't, he had the computer bring up the most recent documents. His first hit was one last modified around a month ago.

"Project Duplicate," read Batman out loud. He looked up from the bottom screen and tapped several keys, bringing the contents of the file onto the screen. The name alone was enough to get his eyebrow raised. 'Multiply' and 'Duplicate'? Coincidence? If coincidence were a horse, he wouldn't bet on it. There were _never _coincidences. Not in Gotham. Not for Batman. He scanned the information briskly, wasting as little time as possible trying to translate all the medical jargon that was up there but it was mixed with words that seemed more in the realms of astrophysics and in time it was lost on him.

But he knew a person or two who could translate.

He took a drive, fashioned as only one of his could be, and searched the computer until he found a place where he could connect the two and start downloading.

"A bat-drive. I like it," said the Joker, and leaned his hand against the keyboard as though that somehow made him look cool. Batman would never know if it had been by accident or on purpose, but whatever the case the Joker seemed to choose that moment to revert to his instinctual peskiness and pressed the big red button labeled 'alarm'.

"What did you just do?!" Bruce snapped, his hands flying over the keys in an attempt to override the system with no luck.

"Aw, c'mon, this place is deserted," said the Joker over the keening wail of the alarm. "Who could it hurt?"

No sooner was it said did a bullet fly through the master screen, leaving it just a sputtering black square with sparks coming out.

"Us, apparently," hissed Batman. He yanked the drive out of the computer, hoping he'd gotten everything, and snatched Joker by his collar. A bullet soared between them, ricocheting off the floor and smashing through a light in the ceiling. Batman stepped back as glass fell before them, and got a good look at the man shooting at them. It was hard to surprise him—he'd been fighting freaks and loons long enough that it was hard to get a leg up on him in the strange enemy category—but this was enough to make his jaw drop.

"Awesome McCoolname?" the Joker said in dead-pan dramatics that would have prompted an eyeroll if the situation wasn't so serious. "You're alive?"

"My name is Alkahest Promethia!" the man said with a snarl, his gun poised. He was less put together than the last time they'd seen him, his fiery hair falling in his face and his clothes singed, but he was just as dangerous and determined as before. He seemed irritated that he'd hit the screen instead, but at long as the computers were in tact, he was in a good way. Batman took note of this and carefully sidled in front of the computers stacked at the sides of the room. There was a noticeable loosening in Alkahest's fingers.

"Potato, Potata," the Joker said dismissively. "So how'd you do it? Fake your own death? Dummy take your place? Reincarnation? That's a fan favourite."

"None of the above," Alkahest hissed. He looked back and forth between the Batman and the Joker and a wry smile twisted his lip. "So you're working together, now, are you?" he snorted in contempt. "You're slipping, Joker."

"Actually," the Joker said, "I think that's you."

Abruptly, the Joker reached beneath his coat and threw out a ball of streamers. On reflex, Alkahest started shooting them down, only to be caught around the ankles by one and toppling over.

"Let's fly, Batman!" yelled the Joker and he jumped over Alkahest and was out the room in flash. Batman followed, silently impressed but not enough to say anything. The skid out of the production room and made their way towards whatever exit they could find. They'd been found out, so stealth was useless now.

The Joker let out a joyful squeal when a bullet hit a wall just as they ran past it.

"Isn't this fun?!"

"I'm wary of your definition of 'fun'."

They skid to a halt when the room they ended up in was a big office, the type that was more a lounge with a desk than anything else, which had those big tinted windows glaring as the back walls.

_Damn._

There was no time to retreat. Alkahest was already in the room with them, looking even more disheveled than before and more likely to shoot them to death.

"You're mine," he hissed.

"You'll have to get through my hubby first," sniffed the Joker and wrapped his arm around Batman's. Bruce shoved him off and forced him to stand behind.

"Not the time," he said.

"Always the time," Joker retorted.

"Alkahest, I don't know what Multiply's done to you, or what they've said to you, but you can't keep doing this."

Alkahest appeared to find this very amusing.

"Multiply's done nothing I wouldn't have done myself." Batman looked around him as Alkahest came forward. With the Joker there, he wouldn't be able to move fast enough to avoid getting hit. "Including this."

_Damn it._

Batman gasped and stumbled backwards when the bullet hit him in the stomach. It didn't pierce his vest, but it was more than enough to knock the wind out of him. He grabbed onto the Joker for a second, attempting to keep himself steady. He was surprised when the Joker gripped him back, and then launched the blades in his gauntlet at the scientist. Alkahest let out a cry as two sliced through his clothes and the final one stabbed him in the shoulder, making him drop his gun.

"You'd think you were getting used to being stabbed," said the Joker mockingly.

"Come on." He yanked the Joker by his arm, trying to use that moment to attempt his escape, but Alkahest wouldn't be silence. The man let out a roar as they ran by, and with no warning caught the Joker by his stomach in a blind tackle that sent them both plummeting to the floor. They rolled towards the windows, hitting and scratching, until the Joker successfully kicked Alkahest off and got to his feet. No sooner had he done it, and Alkahest was pulling himself to his feet in an attempt to recuperate, did he snatch a chair from the desk and smash it into the scientist, and he crashed through the window in a flurry of broken light off broken glass.

"Ha!" the Joker screamed triumphantly, chair still in hand, and stared down as though waiting for Alkahest to go splat. "Now there's a punch line!"

The clown was facing away, so he didn't see it, but Batman went stiff as a board when Alkhest, undamaged and unamused, fell from the ceiling and landed soundlessly behind the Ace of Knaves.

"Joker!" Batman screamed and an honest to god terror riddled him when he thought the Joker might not get the last laugh.

The Joker turned his head, and for the first time since Batman had met him he seemed honestly surprised.

"Who are you, Schrodinger's cat?" he snapped, reaching under his cloak for his next wildcard.

Alkahest just looked at him obligingly before kicking him in the small of his back. His hands hit the remaining parts of the window, keeping him steady just enough to stop him from plummeting to his death. The Batman used that one second of opening to lift his arm, release the remaining blades in his gauntlet and watch them slice through the cord of one of the many lamps hanging from the ceiling and watch it crash down on Alkahest. The Joker grinned at the barely conscious scientist, then up at the extremely irritable Batman.

"I knew you cared."

"Don't get your hopes up," said Batman. "Get the lamp off of him. We can use this to our advantage."

"Ugh, manual labour?" the Joker groaned.

Of course that would be his response.

"You think you're honestly funny, don't you?" said Batman as he made his way over. He was painfully aware of how nonchalant this conversation had turned even though they'd both been staring pretty deeply into the face of death just a second ago. Maybe they were used to it.

"I think I'm funny," the Joker confirmed with a nod of his head.

The scientist rusted and with a strange slowness reached under his coat and pulled out a small black and blue sphere. Batman had one guess as to what it was.

"I always thought," Alkahest breathed, and in that moment his thin glasgow smile seemed like the twisted lip of a maniac, "you were hilarious."

There was no time to stop him before he crushed the sphere in his fist and blue light exploded into the room, blinding both the criminal and the vigilante long enough that when they opened their eyes there wasn't even a trail of blood for them to track.

Even the Joker was strangely quiet as they left the facility and got back in the car to return to Gotham. Alkahest's reappearing act was nothing if not impressive. And what was with that line? At this point, Batman wasn't sure if Multiply loathed or idolized the Joker.

He glanced over at the Joker, who was gnawing on his busted lip, and actually swerved when he noticed the clown was bleeding through his coat. The Joker was bewildered.

"Jeeze, Bats," he said after a long, mortified silence, "I know you've never seen me in this state of dishevelment but let's not get ahead of ourselves."

"You were shot," said Batman through his teeth. "Why didn't you say anything?"

"I know you. You'd just use this as an excuse to get me topless."

"Could you be serious for five seconds?" Batman snapped, honest to god anger bubbling in his stomach. He didn't know why. Or he knew, but he didn't want to believe it or accept it. Because if it were true, then what had he become? What was he going to be?

The Joker seemed to see this and stared at him in all sobriety, before smirking and looking out the window.

"You ask a lot of me, Bats."

Batman had the Joker cover his eyes one the way back to the Batcave. He didn't know why, but he didn't feel right kicking the Joker to the curb while he was wounded. He just needed to stitch him back together and then he would be guiltless and home free.

Once they reached their destination, the Joker got out of the car with the sort of ease he would have anyway. His flamboyance had been turned down from eleven, but he was still just as cheery and annoying as ever. That didn't mean that he wasn't dripping blood everywhere.

"Get over here," Batman muttered, indicating a chair with a tray of medical equipment sitting beside it. It was usually where Bruce sat to repair himself on particularly rough days. He would only let someone else use it this one time.

"Take off your shirt," said the vigilante, gesturing to the Joker's top.

The Joker smirked, but was kind enough that he just did as he was told and sat down. Batman tried not to concentrate too much on the man's body, but it was difficult. He'd never seen it. Somehow, no matter how many explosions, gun fights, and hand-to-hands the Joker had, he came out with nary a thread out of place. To see him honestly bare and damaged was almost humbling. He was bleached white on his torso, just as he was his face and neck, and silvery scars riddled choice parts of him, though they were thin and seemed as though they were healing. Several dark bruises were taking form from the scuffle with Alkahest already, leaving poppy patches on that pure-white skin. And of course, there was that bullet wound in his side, seeping blood so much that the deep crimson smear could have been a second pair of lips on their own.

"Ogling, are we?" said Joker, startling Batman out of his reverie.

"Don't get your hopes up," he said for the second time that day, voice choked up because he was embarrassed that he'd been caught staring.

"Why would my _hopes _get up?" the clown purred.

The Batman made a mission to ignore him from then on out. You could hear it in his voice: all the blood loss was cutting off the circulation to his brain. Batman got onto his knees so he was eye level with the medical equipment, and took the threads off of the tray. Slowly and carefully, he began to thread the stitches through the Joker, feeling as though he were putting together a broken doll.

"You could have bled to death, you know," said Batman. "You're lucky it was just a graze."

The Joker chuckled.

"Your concern for me is touching, but misplaced," he said, hitting the nail on the head in doing so. "Shouldn't Gotham's aim be to kill the Joker? Not save him? And isn't the Batman the dark heart of Gotham? Why would you care if I died or not?"

Batman sighed.

"I need you," he said, "in order to complete this case."

The clown's smile widened, twisting red lips in hateful malice.

"Wrong," he said. "You just need me. Could you honestly survive without me? I confirm you—I complete you. And you still think you only save me out of principal." He tilted his head. "I think you've been sniffing the joker venom for too long."

"Whatever you say," said Batman. He wasn't interested in contending Joker today. Too much effort. He knotted the stitches and snapped them off. He only disinfected the wound as an after thought. All the while, the Joker didn't even cringe.

"Tell me something."

"Of course, dear."

"Why are you still wearing that shirt?" asked Batman, trying not to let his voice tumble into a growl. He glanced the thing where it was tossed in a pile on the floor, along with the Joker's vest and coat.

"What, that?" said the Joker. "I thought it just looked dashing. Nice to know I get noticed when I try."

"You should get rid of it." The vigilante started to clean the Joker's blood off his gloves. "It's ruined now."

"You don't get rid of things just because they're broken," the clown said. "That's what the world did to us," his eyes glinted, "and look how that turned out."

Batman turned to the Joker. He wondered what it was like to live like the Joker—to know you'd lost it long ago, and to keep on going for that reason and that reason alone. What was it like to be crazy and to know it? What it scary? Did it jade you? Did it make you even more insane? Or maybe he only half knew, and was half pretending. Would that be miserable or painful?

Batman suddenly felt as though he were thinking about himself.

He flinched when the Joker caught him staring again, and the man grinned.

"This is where we kiss."

"You make me sick."

Batman conceded to let the Joker stay in the cave, under close and guarded supervision at all times, until the next day where he could go and be a pain in the butt when it was on the clock. Meanwhile, Bruce sent off project duplicate to Fox, hoping the man would get back to him with his analysis as soon as possible.

Until then, all he could do was wait there and hope he could survive this hell just a little bit longer.

* * *

Rather liked this chapter, though I feel like it was a little barren somehow. Maybe that's just me? Ending them is always the hardest part, you know. I may expand this later, but for now it'll do. I also had a weird time trying to get a decent handle on the two characters today, but I guess it turned out alright in the end. Anyway, thanks again to the readers. I really appreciate it—the reviewers especially really brighten my day, you know?


	5. Chapter 5

It was six o' clock at night when he woke up, he was groggy as hell, and he had no idea where the Joker was.

Batman stood there for a little while (apparently he'd fallen asleep standing up) and stared at the place where he'd tied the Joker painstakingly down to a chair the previous night. The ropes were still there, strewn neatly across the seat. As was a message that said with unabashed cursive 'taking a bathroom break'.

At this point, Batman knew he was an idiot for thinking that ropes would spontaneously be a viable way to hold the Joker.

As he searched blindly through the never-ending expanses of the cave, he tried to think back to the previous night. He'd tied the Joker down, then stood and watched him. The Joker had very noticeably pretended to go to sleep, and every hour or so his hand would creep slowly towards his lapel. He remembered the clown's hand finally getting beneath his coat, and then…and then…nothing. He squeezed his eyes shut when it hit him.

That son of a bitch had knocked him out.

Luckily, he'd locked all the doors leading out of the Batcave, for the sake of caution and the respect of past experiences. It would take a bazooka to get out of there. Then again, this was the Joker. He could probably manage the load on his own.

Batman groaned and shook his head in irritation when he finally found the clown.

Hanging upside down from the ceiling and wrapped tightly in what looked like one of Batman's capes was the Joker, struggling to get out of his self-made prison. He rotated around a few times, grunting and writhing in a meager attempt to escape, and then stopped dead when he saw the Batman. The two of them shared a bemused silence before the Joker took action.

"Don't panic," he said. "This is all a dream."

"Comforting thought," Batman sighed. He left the Joker hanging there. He was too worn out to actually play the hero and let him down. He went to his control room and collapsed in the chair. The bat outfit got really uncomfortable over night. He didn't think he'd had to wear it this long since the last time he'd been drugged. Why did he have the sneaking suspicion that that was the Joker's fault too?

He shook his head. He needed to get his mind off the laughing man for a minute and concentrate on more important things: like Alkahest Promethia and how he'd survived getting stabbed and thrown off a roof on two separate occasions. Thankfully, it wouldn't be long to get his answer. He got up for a moment to lock the door tight behind him, then sat down again and whipped out his cell phone. Hurrah for the mundane gadgets of old. He pressed two—auto dial was always a good thing when you were in a situation where you needed to be able to concentrate and call someone at the same time.

"Mr. Fox," he said when the phone was picked up.

"Good morning, Mr. Wayne," said the man on the other side, his deep voice light hearted as it always was. "You sound a little down on the weather today."

"I can't say I can correct you on that," Batman sighed, then ran his hand over the back of his head. "I need some good news."

"I can't say I can give it to you, sir," said Lucius with a faint chuckle, "but I'll do my best."

"Thanks for the consideration," breathed the vigilante as he sat down.

"To be honest, sir, I was a bit surprised that you sent this to me at first. I wasn't aware you had any interest in Alkahest Promethia beyond his extracurricular activities." There was the shuffling of paper and an office chair rolling across the floor. "It's really a lot less complicated than you would think. Essentially, this 'project duplicate' theorizes a way to project oneself, if you will."

"Project yourself?" repeated the Batman.

"Be in two places at once."

Batman raised an eyebrow.

"Is that so?"

"Mind you, it's theoretical. Most of the calculations seemed to have been made from scratch. Frankly, if I were a scientist of merit, I'd take this with a pinch of salt."

"But?" said Bruce with a smile, knowing it was coming before it did.

"But," Lucius laughed softly, "the realm of impossibility is ultimately up to the beholder. After all," Batman could almost hear him smile, "strange things happen in Gotham."

Batman rubbed his chin, considering this.

"One more thing, Lucius," he said. "These 'projections'—how many could you make at once?"

"Mmm, probably only one, since they depend on the maker's consciousness to function. More than one body could exist, since there's no evidence that the body's disappear once they've served their use, but only one would be able to _think_. Only one could be alive. You'd have to have a badly fractured personality to make more than one functioning duplicate at once."

"But they could replace each other."

"Yes. As long as the controlling mind wasn't split, then according to this they could replace each other in rapid succession. I don't see why anyone would want to do this, though. The strain this would put on your psyche would be unimaginable. The mind isn't supposed to stretch beyond the body. Some of our limits we should never have to know."

Batman understood that much.

"So, what you're telling me is that these aren't the real Alkahest? These are copies of him?"

"Pretty much, sir."

"So they exist in order to be able to take blows from afar—getting the job done without any physical consequences."

"Yes. Or is that too far-fetched?"

"Just the opposite," he breathed. "This sheds light on a lot of things."

"Of course it does," Lucius laughed. "Well, then good luck."

"Thank you," he said, then hung up. He sighed, and didn't waste his energy turning around. He didn't even bother to ask how the man got past the locked door without making a sound. Somehow, it was all just too predictable. "Am I awake now?"

"Considering your lightening quick and super powerful bat-senses are still perfectly intact after a being bombarded with sleeping gas, I'd say it's dubious."

"What were you doing with my cape, Joker?" he asked within a deep sigh, and turned to look at the man. Maybe he was wasting his breath in pointing it out, but the Joker was grinning down at him, his hair ruffled rather strangely, and his lapel standing up in a bizarre way. And that one cape of Batman's was still tangled stubbornly around the Joker's leg. He looked more like someone who would be called 'the joker' every second. Batman hoped it was evident that he was less than amused beneath his cowl.

"I was testing my escapist skills," the clown answered.

"Should I ever throw my cape at you," said Batman with an un-subtle roll of his eyes.

"Expect the unexpected!"

"What were you looking for, Joker?"

The ace of knaves blinked, surprised that Batman wasn't in the mood to play his games. Trusting one to not knock you out and then having it done regardless would do that to you.

"Sharp as a tack, aint'cha, Bats?" the Joker sneered. He leaned closer to the vigilante, his smile widening as he did to the point you could see his lips stretching past his gums. "Nothing much. Actually, I was just looking for this."

Batman went rigid when the Joker reached back and started to pull something out of his pocket—he would admit that it was curiosity rather than caution that made him hesitate in snatching the Joker's hand and knocking him to the floor. His patience was rewarded when, out of all the things he could have been, the Joker pulled out a deck of cards. The Batman stared at them silently as the Joker began to pass them card-shark style between his hands, revealing they were all Joker cards from different decks. They were the ones the man had a tendency to leave behind at the crime scenes as his calling card—Batman had started collecting them for admittedly perverse reasons. Something made the hair on the back of Batman's neck prickle when he saw the cards, heard them rustle against each other as they passed between the Joker's hands. Then he realized it.

He kept all his mementos in a separate area altogether. In a chamber hidden in a lower floor. In a locked down section. One door away from an elevator that went straight into the mansion.

The Batman brought the Joker to the ground in a flurry of cards and capes, all the many grinning faces falling all around him making him momentarily blind. The Joker's head hit the floor with an audible crack that would have made any other human being unconscious. But he was only on the edge of being human, and his smile was uncontainable even in pain.

"What are you hiding behind that door, Batman?" he said with a controlled smugness. "It must be a big secret."

"I don't know how you managed to get all the way in there," hissed Batman, "but if you take one step further inside this place, I'll break every limb you have."

"Is that so, my darling Bats," he snickered. Batman was honestly surprised when the Joker snatched him by the collar of his cape and yanked him further down so their foreheads grinded. "I'd like to see you try," the clown dared, his voice thick with glee. "It'd be a _laugh_."

"Don't push it, Joker. People snap sometimes. People break."

"You're already broken. And you'd never snap around me."

"What makes you so sure?"

"Because you'd miss me!" the Joker declared, and a burst of hot and sickly sweet breath flooded Batman's nose.

The vigilante recoiled and tossed the Joker to the floor in anger and frustration, sick of this needless dependence that he kept being told about but he knew didn't exist.

"I don't care what you do at this point," the Batman said, turning away from the Joker. "I need to check something out in the city." His cape fluttered as he began to walk away. "You're not coming with me."

He stumbled and only managed to keep from falling because of his proximity to a wall when the Joker leapt forward and grabbed tightly onto one of his legs. He looked down, bewildered and appalled, and was surprised to see Joker grinning up in what could only have been a twisted desperation.

"You can't leave me behind," the Joker said, and you could almost hear the million meanings in those words, none the words themselves. "**You can't leave me.**"

"What's stopping me?" he retorted and the Joker's eyes went wide.

"**I am.**"

With little warning the alarms in the cave began to go off, the sheer inappropriateness of the timing coupled with the perhaps-too-good acoustics in the room making Batman cringe. With criminal and vigilante looked to the screens, but it was the Joker alone who found it amusing.

"Duty calls."

The Batman bared his teeth at the Joker and shook him off his leg.

"I trust I will be joining you?" the clown called as Batman continued into the darkness.

"Hurry up if you are," was the reply.

The Joker squealed in delight.

"I knew you wouldn't have the heart to leave me."

Batman had been thinking more along the lines of not being stupid enough, but whichever most appealed.

Neither of them was particularly surprised when five minutes later they were standing in front of the crackling blue remains of what had once been an apartment complex. It was raining heavily, and the water merely coursed over the Batman while it slicked the Joker's hair down to his head and made his clothes cling to him. The vigilante half expected the Joker's face to smear in the water.

The two of them stood deep in the shadows, hardly bothering with the sirens and the yells just beyond them in the spattered lights cast by the streetlamps.

"Someone really needs to go on vacation," said the Joker, and it was strange to hear that even he was exasperated with Multiply. But this could only go on so long. And it was coming to an end.

"He's still in there," Batman breathed.

"How can you tell?"

A ray of blue light burst out of what was left of the building's ceiling and pierced the clouds in the sky, the trail of rain it had gone through turning into a stream of white mist in its wake.

"Ah," said the Joker, wringing water out of his shirt. "Yes, well, I'm convinced. Plan of action?"

"Apprehend him and make him explain."

"Why are you so much fun?" the Joker giggled, following Batman through a window and up the collapsing staircase inside. The building was falling apart, true, but if one of Multiply was in there, then Batman could certainly manage. He was less than concerned about what the Joker's fate would be, though. At least, he kept telling himself that even after every falling beam he stopped from crushing the admittedly frail villain, every flame that the rain hadn't squelched he stopped from licking off the Joker's skin, and every area where he had to shove down the Joker's head to keep him from choking on smoke. The Joker seemed deeply amused by the whole thing, and had a manic grin on his face the entire time. Even when they finally found the room where the blasts were coming from.

The floor Alkahest stood on was falling apart beneath his feet, and looked as though it could only hold for a few more minutes. It must have been what was left of the attic, as you could tell it had been a room always destitute, with dead bugs strewn on the ground and the water that slid down to the building's lower levels was brown with dirt. Nevertheless, the man stared up desperately at the sky as it appeared through the nothing-cieling, to where the batsignal made a dark shadow on the clouds above. His lips were pulled back as though he were crying, though it was impossible to tell within the rain, and his brows were pulled tightly together. You could hear his breathing even behind the thunder and sirens and the yells, and the heaving of his shoulders looked painfully clear.

A plank of wood snapped beneath the Joker's foot as he stepped up, and Alkahest turned abruptly to greet them. And he did with a smile.

"So it's true," he said, though his voice was thin. "You have a new pet, Joker."

"I'm in the process of training him," the Joker said proudly. "But look, I can make him roll over already." Alkahest lifted his gun and the Batman stepped back, but the Joker just turned to the vigilante and with a clap of his hands said, "One, two—roll over!"

The Batman knocked the Joker to the floor as the gun discharged a huge ball of blue very threateningly through the air where they'd just been, sending the pair of them somersaulting on the floor.

"You're such a clever boy!" said the Joker once they'd stopped rolling. "Cookie for you!"

"Just because you even have the Batman on your side won't change your fate!" Alkahest yelled, and his weapon let loose a soft, high pitched sound as it readied itself for the next blast. Batman yanked the Joker to his feet and dragged him along as all the floor they'd walked on was obliterated in their wake. "We will overcome you!" Alkahest continued to scream. "Your darkness will be ours!" The Joker shrieked with laughter as the floor finally gave in and they were all sent crashing down through the lower levels, blue fire tasting them and wood breaking on them. "You will perish! You have to!" Alkahest wasn't even winded when they all hit the ground with the clown's hysterics as a backdrop, and he slowly pulled himself up, the blue flame giving his dark eyes a mad glint as he lifted his weapon once more and aimed it squarely at the Joker. "It's the only option."

The Batman snatched his batarang from his belt and swiftly tossed it at the scientist's hand. From their proximity, it was an easy target, and Alkahest let out a cry and the weapon dropped only to discharge into the floor.

"No!" he cried as his gun disappeared down the hole it had created, then he snarled and made a flying leap for the Joker's neck. The clown managed to evade getting strangled, but Alkahest was still physically stronger and after several well aimed punches, they were both on the floor with the Joker clearly losing, his hands never getting close enough to the inside of his coat to be able to pull out an ace. Batman flew into action and threw Alkahest across the room. He'd sorely underestimated the strength of a scientist's hands, though, and Alkahest held tight to the Joker even as he hurtled into the opposing wall. The impact was enough that the clown was able elbow Alkahest in the jaw and slide away, and just as Alkahest began to try and pull himself up, Batman brought his heel down on the back of his neck. The man collapsed, and even though he shook as though he wanted to get back up, he didn't seem to have the heart for it anymore.

"Why?" asked Batman in a whisper. "Why must you kill the Joker so badly?"

"Because," he looked up and the lightening above him made the shadow of his Glasgow smile a grin in and of itself, "darkness…is the only option…"

It was the Joker who was first to react when Alkahest began to reach under his coat, obviously aiming to pull the same disappearing act as last time. The clown, by the looks of it, was only really amused by his own jokes and took running gags with a pinch of salt. He kicked Alkahest jovially in the face, then again in the stomach, making him let go of the blue orb. For some reason, Batman was not compelled to stop him.

"You really had me going, there," said Joker, getting down and pinning Alkahest beneath himself. "Trying to kill me and Bats—so silly! Who'd think to do such a thing besides a serious party pooper?"

"I don't know what to do anymore," admitted Alkahest listlessly. "I can't kill you. No matter what I do, I can't kill you. I can't even copy you. You're not really human," he said. "Not anymore."

"Right you are, sweetheart," the Joker agreed. He pulled a party popper from his breast pocket and it only vaguely registered what he might use it for. So Batman only stared in confusion when the Joker placed the thing in Alkahest's mouth, so only the string stuck out between his lips. Alkahest didn't stop him or even struggle when the madman took the string between two fingers, and finally it occurred to Batman what was going to happen. "I'm only human in body."

"No!" he yelled, but Alkahest's eyes were already closed in defeat and the Joker had the o-k to tug at the string. The explosion was loud enough that it made the thunder seem soft in comparison. Batman looked at the corpse only out of foolishness and pride, even though the blood as he'd felt it splatter on his face had made a million images he hadn't needed come to mind. Seeing the Joker hunched on top of Alkahest's, staring down at the black and red halo on the floor as though it was still a face with eyes that might have stared back was enough to give him nightmares for decades.

"You didn't need to do that," he breathed.

"Perhaps not," the Joker conceded, before pointing up. "But look. We have a replacement."

The Batman did as he was told, and looking down from the hole in the floor above them was another Alkahest. The scientist had a gun drawn and trained upon the Joker, but he still managed to make eye contact with Batman long enough for the vigilante to pull out his batarang once again. So this was it—project duplicate in action. A million copies, all doing the bidding of one 'supreme being'. Even this 'Alkahest' was just another copy, designed to protect the original.

They stared at each other, half hidden beneath shadows and rain, and then Alkahest slid his gun into its holster and began to depart.

_No, you don't._

"Come on, Joker. This might be our last chance."

"Right behind ya, Bats," the Joker breathed, and then they were both taking off up the stairs. Batman followed the sounds of footsteps up the staircase and through the crumbling corridors that remained, until they were out on the last remaining part of actual roof. He looked around him, and caught Alkahest making a leap over the gap between buildings. He pulled out his grappling gun, and being the king of the impromptu, he aimed it at Alkahest's leg. It looped harmlessly around it, and the man's jump was stopped mid air. He was yanked back onto the roof, and the way he slapped down on his stomach like he did seemed indisputably painful. Undeterred, Alkahest pulled out his gun and simply shot the rope off. Still, it wasn't in time to avoid being tackled by the Joker, even if it seemed as though the clown had been deemed temporarily harmless by Alkahest and was knocked off with amazing ease. Alkahest stood and completed his jump over the gap between buildings, Batman and the Joker hot on his tail, but the longer they ran the more distance was made between them.

"Hoo, boy." The Batman turned, actually stopped when he heard the Joker say that. The man was on the building behind the one Batman had already gotten to, just standing near the ledge. He was breathing heavily and his hand was pressed tight against his side. At first, Batman just assumed it was him being a child at the worst possible moment, as per usual, until he noticed the dark red splotch spreading on the Joker's clothes. He nearly hit himself when he saw it—the Joker's stitches had broken. And how would they have possibly held in all this madness? Joker hunched and put his remaining hand on his knees. He still managed enough energy to grin. "I'm really not cut out for marathons. Go on without me, Bats. Fireworks are better from afar."

"Don't give up," said Batman. Alkahest was rapidly getting further and further out of their reach. He reached his hand out towards the Joker. "You can still get here."

"Unless you've got a flashlight," said the Joker with feeble resignation masked beneath a little smile, "there's no way I'll ever be able to make it across."

Batman dropped his hand to his side when he realized it was true. And he knew he could have just continued to chase Alkahest, to end this once and for all. But he didn't. He instead slunk back to the Joker and helped him back across the buildings, down stairs, and into the car. People had gotten a leg up over Batman before, but this time the taste of defeat was especially bitter, if for no other reason than that it was because he cared more about making sure his arch nemesis didn't bleed to death than saving the lives of thousands of innocent citizens.

"Now how will we find him?" he lamented as he drove blindly through the rain. The Joker was leaned against the door, his arms wrapped tightly around himself. He looked very much like he wouldn't be able to hold out much longer.

"Don't sweat the little things, Bats," the madman said. "After all," a triumphant smirk lit up his sickly face. "I gave him my calling card."

Batman blinked. One of the joker cards? What was the relevance of that? "And?"

"I can always keep track of a card that's missing from my deck," he said. "I thought he might get away, so I took a precaution."

"So that's what you did when you ran into him on the roof—you let him throw you off so that he would lead us straight to Multipy's headquarters." It made sense. And that was actually a very deeply disturbing thing to realize. "Why didn't you tell me? You could have saved us both a lot of injuries, especially yourself. You could die tonight because of this. Then what?"

The Joker snickered.

"Then you wouldn't have such dashing inner conflict. Then you wouldn't have any blood on your hands. Relax, Bruce," he said. "No one would ever think it was you."

"That's not what I--," he froze up, prayed he'd heard wrong, and looked at Joker regardless of the fact he was still driving. "What?"

The two men held each other's gazes for a long time, the Joker's eyes glinting with amusement.

"Oh," said the Joker. "Whoops."

"I am not--"

"Bruce Wayne, Gotham's millionaire playboy orphan. You couldn't make a more specific denial if you tried."

"I…I…!" Batman sputtered. He'd denied guesses at his identity hundreds of times, by the feel of it, but this was something else. He had the feeling the Joker had solid proof, and had had it for a long time. He was so sure of this fact that he did nothing when the Joker reached across the car towards his face.

"Who'd a thunk," the Joker said gently, and weakly flicked off the Batman's cowl, "the Batman had such handsome mug?"

"How did you know?" Bruce croaked.

"My calling cards. You've always kept them. I've always known. Today really just confirmed it, though—as though I wouldn't want to see what was behind door number two. Though anyone with half a brain could have guessed that there's only one person in the city with enough money to fuel a lifestyle like the Bat's, isn't that so, Brucey-boy?" He shook his head. "But what good would it have done to expose you, to clip your wings? Don't worry, Bats." He winked. "Your secret's safe with me."

Batman didn't believe that for a nanosecond, but what other option did he have? He couldn't bribe the Joker, threaten him, or even manage to put him in jail long enough for him to stop being a threat. One short of killing him, there was nothing he could do—and even if he was the type of man who could walk away from murder feeling as though he'd been righteous in his cause, he doubted even then that the Joker could take a punchline at his own expense lying down. He gripped the steering wheel as tight as he possibly could, feeling naked without the knowledge that his mask could protect him. He was now very much a human being—not even the Joker's equal. Beyond the bat, he was virtually nothing. He was weak. The thought was terrifying and humbling.

"Oh, don't be like that," snickered the Joker. "Don't joke yourself. You wanted me to find out. Why else would you late me hang around your inner sanctum for _days_? I would have figured things out eventually. You must have realized that."

"Why would I want you to find out?"

"Who knows?" he shrugged. "Maybe you were feeling lonely."

Bruce snarled and yanked his cowl back on. There was nothing he could do now. He could only hope.

Had anyone else noticed that when it got to the point when you could only pray was the worst time to start praying?

"So you're absolutely sure that you'll be able to track the card?" he said, refusing to let this get to him.

"Absolutely."

"Then tomorrow night, this ends."

"Hurrah," the Joker said halfheartedly. He glanced at the Batman and took in the way he was grinding his teeth and clenching his hands with a foreign interest.

"Stop pouting," he said, looking out the window. "You're lucky. At least you have a mask beneath that face."

Batman stared at the Joker's face that seemed to have been painted on, but was now as much his flesh as the rest of him. He said what he said next regardless of that sallow skin, even knowing that it felt like he was telling a lie.

"We all have a face beneath the mask."

"That so?" the clown snickered. "Funny thing to hear from someone who lives in Gotham, the undisputed city of faces."

By faces, he clearly meant all consuming masks. He was right, too. The Scarecrow, the Riddler, Two Face, Bane, they'd all become the faces they'd only meant to use to hide themselves and were twisting further and further away from being human.

"Those people can still find themselves if they try."

"No they can't. What you are in the dark is your face."

"What does that prove?"

"It's nighttime out, Bats," he replied, and the rain grew suddenly heavier. "Time to fly."

* * *

What is this? A formula? Is every chapter going to be 'find Alkahest, kick his ass, retreat because of injured Joker, and drive away in a freakishly cool car'? What would possess me to do that?

I'm looking forward to the next chapter. Don't worry, the formula won't stick. Probably.

This one might actually even be the penultimate, but I'm not a hundred percent sure since I don't work on schedules. Why don't I work on schedules? Because I suck, that's why.

Once again, I thank all the awesomers out there that have read, reviewed, favourited, and alerted. I suppose you understand that I love you from the previous four chapters, but I just want to make sure you know. Thank you ^_^


	6. Chapter 6

24 hours. How is it, after 24 hours of it sitting there inside you, emotions like his could still be in his skin?

Batman stared at himself in the mirror, continuously changing between himself and Bruce Wayne. He looked for who was real, who was fake, the mask and the face. And most of all, he looked for the bits of him that were neither—for the twisted tumors of soul that had been left behind from being told over and over again what he knew he couldn't be. And then looking for the Joker somewhere inside his skin, and he found that cocky, mocking face most easily out of all of them, and had no choice but to smash the mirror to pieces with his fist.

"Master Wayne?"

He turned around, and suddenly the world was drenched with sound—his thick and heavy breathing, the glass of the mirror falling into the sink, the sound of sweat dripping down his brow and the faraway rushing in his ears. He put his hand on the wall to keep from falling over from the sensory overload, but all he could hear was the false ocean that flowed inside seashells and human palms.

"Yes, Alfred?" he groaned, quickly regretting his adding to the mess of noise swirling all around him.

"You don't look so well, Sir," said Bruce's butler and long-time friend, with a quirked eyebrow. Bruce was so used to the usual British sarcastic understatement that he barely noticed it was there at all, and took it at face value.

"I'm fine."

"If the state of your reflection is any indication," said Alfred, glancing behind Batman, "then I have to disagree."

The vigilante turned his head to look at said reflection. Most of it was piled up in a mess of fractured lines in the sink. For some reason, this brought a short-lived chuckle out of him.

"Maybe you're right," he rasped, and put his face in one hand. "I feel about as put together as this."

"Perhaps it's just me," said the old man and he moved further into the bathroom, "but you've been acting peculiar recently. Something's troubling you."

There was something deeply amusing about the fact it wasn't even meant as a question.

"It's…" He looked at the ceiling. "It's difficult to explain."

Impossible to explain. Even Batman was having a hard time understanding. It was as though anything that so much looked at the Joker instantly became caught in some never-ending, deeply unfunny joke that no one else could understand, just because they'd ever once foolishly bothered to laugh. Nevertheless, Alfred pursed his lips at this, giving the slightest hint that he understood.

"I trust you mean it has to do with your nightly exploits?"

"Good guess."

Alfred nodded faintly at this, walked until he was standing right in front of Bruce, and then put his hand on the man's shoulder. And just from that, the world seemed suddenly silent.

"Do you know what you are, sir?" Alfred said calmly. "A mommet."

Batman was lifted from his inner conflict long enough to be perturbed. "A mommet?"

"Yes, Sir. It's another name for a poppet."

Bruce narrowed his eyes. He knew Alfred wasn't referring to any term of endearment, and frankly, he knew the term from the Crucible, and admitted himself to be unimpressed with the etymology.

"A voodoo doll? That's what I am?"

Alfred smiled faintly. "_You_ are someone who exists entirely to take on the pains of others. You are made to hold the twisted wants and needs of others. People will take from you, twist you, and beat you to a pulp. But it is your job, regardless of how much pain you feel, to keep on the facade of not being human. Because if the world sees you as human, sir, it will mean that all we're really capable of is beating other people to a pulp."

Batman stared at the man, trying to grasp something that seemed above and beyond him. But it was him, wasn't it? That's what he was. Because in the end, a mommet kept people from being hurt, just by existing on the edge of reality—on the edge of people's thoughts. Maybe, these days, that was all he was good at. Maybe that was all he was ever supposed to be. But what warped human beings made a puppet just to kill it?

"Not too many people," Bruce Wayne said to the butler, "would agree with your understanding of the term."

Alfred grinned, as though he'd been caught setting up an elaborate prank. "Admittedly, there's a bit of poetic license involved but English requires some lucidity at times. And that doesn't change that I'm right."

"I'm sure you're always right, Alfred."

"I'm glad you've finally realized as much, Master Wayne."

"Then what's the moral of the story?"

"The moral?" the butler said as though to even wonder was absurd. "It's that you can never fall apart." When Bruce was surprised by this, the man chuckled faintly, eyes twinkling as they had a tendency to do. "But should you ever need mending, remember, you're never as alone as you think, Master Wayne. I'll make sure of that."

Bruce allowed himself to be regarded in a small silence as he tried to understand. When he became aware that he had always understood, he smiled gently at Alfred, thanking him for a world of pains he must have endured in secret.

"Thank you, Alfred."

Alfred's grip on his shoulder tightened, offering many intangible kindnesses in doing so.

"And if you ever feel the urge to break another mirror, try not to make such a bloody mess of it."

He let loose a little breath of a laugh, but even if right now his heart was too heavy with all sorts of useless, leaden things, with every inch of himself, he believed it. "I'll keep that in mind."

It didn't take him too long to get back to the cave, not that he was feeling particularly eager, but he had important things to take care of. Certainly more important than he was. He had no idea where the Joker had gone, not that he had any particular conviction in finding him. What more could the Joker possibly find out or screw up? There was no point in even trying to hide. Even still, as he stepped into the cool, white light of the lamps overhead, Bruce Wayne turned back into Batman, for all that that was worth.

He looked around the cave, knowing the Joker wouldn't have wanted to get too far away. If anything, he'd probably broken his stitches again and was off bleeding on the floor somewhere. When he walked down through the garage he'd taken to keeping the Porsche in since it had been relegated to being the Joker's private car, he was stupid enough to walk unsuspectingly past the car, only to trip on what, in the flurry of falling, looked very much like wing tip shoe.

Then again, the Joker didn't strike him as much of a people pleaser.

"Whoops," the Joker said as he slid his upper body out from under the car. "My bad." He pursed his lips and tilted his head in bemusement. "Aren't bats always supposed to land on their feet?"

"Wrong species," Batman grumbled. He must have been completely out of it for him to miss that. He stood up slowly and didn't bother to dust himself off, though some powdered glass from the mirror drifted from his hands. "I need to talk to you."

"Can't you tell I'm getting my beauty sleep right now?" he grinned. "Join me?"

"Tell me something."

"Spoil sport. Listen, this is your last chance. When I'm sleeping, I don't want to be woken up just because you're feeling frisky."

"Who are you?"

The Joker blinked at the question, probably wanting to vote Occam's razor on it, but even still he managed enough courtesy to muster a snarky reply.

"The man behind curtain number two," he answered incredulously, as though even he didn't think that any of this was funny. "I like kittens, the ocean, and sex on the beach. The drink. But if you're up for it—"

"I'm serious," said Batman.

"What?" the green-eyed man smiled. "We can't both be serious sometimes?"

"_Who are you?_"

"I am a very funny man." When he saw that the observation itself was unamusing, he smiled. "But," said the Joker, sliding back under the car. "You can call me Jack."

The Batman blinked. The name struck him with a sudden realization that, as a consequence of being human like he was, the Joker must have had a family, parents, someone who'd named him not knowing how badly such a name would sit on him later in his life. There was an odd naiveté to the name that was almost enough to shake the Batman up. Jack the Ripper must have had the same problem. "Jack."

The Joker snickered a little and nodded. "Yup."

"Is that your name? Do you remember your family?"

The Joker slid out only slightly, so just his head down to his lip was visible beneath the black shadow of the Porsche. "A little. They're a bit fuzzy but…I remember we were poor…lived out in the rural areas. I don't remember my parents so well, but I remember a sister, Jillian, but no one called her by her whole name. I think we might have been farmers…of, uh," he narrowed his eyes as though he was trying to remember, "beans. Biggest bean stocks our side of the county." He shook his head and pursed his lips, and when the Batman grew closer he averted his face from him as though he was in honest pain. "But after I accidentally lost my cow in this stupid bet, I felt so sick of myself that I went to a well to drown my sorrows but I ended up falling and I hit my head pretty hard." Batman stopped. This sounded very familiar all of a sudden. "I think that's why I—"

"Witty," grunted the vigilante, amazed he'd bought that pathetic garbage for a second. "Very witty."

"I know," snickered the Joker as Batman began to walk away. "I think I might have borrowed a bag or two from Awesome."

Batman stopped just before he left the Joker to his madness when a question surfaced in his mind.

"You don't know at all do you?" he whispered. "Who you are?"

The Joker didn't answer for a while, and then he laughed.

"At the end of the day, a 'person' is just a little thought within a little mind. There's no proof it happened, no reason it was there. It might as well be just as real as a nursery rhyme. It's the same for everyone. I guess most people can pretend they exist, but I don't remember," he admitted happily. "I don't remember anything. Or rather, I remember everything. A million lives, but none of them mine." Batman turned to see the Joker's care-free grin, so psychotically sincere on that bleached white face it made the darkness all around them blacker still. "But it's so fun to pretend!"

Batman almost felt inclined to agree.

"Why does that make you happy?" he asked. It was a question long overdue. Naturally, he was given yet another non-answer.

"Oh, Batman," said the clown, "I'm always chipper when you're near."

Batman felt his lip twitch.

"Maybe," he said, "maybe you're a mommet too."

Crap. He hadn't meant to say that out loud. The look that the statement garnered was one he admitted he deserved.

"A mommet?" said the Joker then narrowed his eyes. "A voodoo doll? Isn't that already someone else's gimmick?"

Batman shook his head never mind, hardly interested in explaining himself this time.

"Oh, by the way, Bruce--,"

"Call me Bruce again," Batman hissed, "and I'll snap your neck like a twig."

The green-eyed man stopped and quirked an eyebrow before continuing with a certain slowness most people only saved for idiots and children. "_Brewster _is the name of the area my card ended up in, so when you're ready, let's check it out." He smiled obligingly when he must have noticed Bruce catch a groan. "But thanks for the advance warning."

The Joker jolted when Batman hit his fist against the wall. He hated this. He hated everything to do with this. He hated that, now more than ever, he was afraid. If the Joker ever, ever got bored, if he decided to let up for one second, then it would be something far worse than the end of the vigilante Batman—it would mean that the battle for Gotham was lost.

But the Joker kept on smiling frivolously, and that seemed so much worse.

"You don't care at all, do you?" he snarled. "That you _know _me."

"Don't be silly, Bats," said the Joker amusedly. "I've always known you. Stalking about ones personals does give you a certain intimacy that can't be attained otherwise."

"How can you care so little about everything?" He moved forward suddenly, his cape flourishing as he did, and stood directly over the Joker. "How is it that everything is a joke to you?"

The reply was very simply, "Force of habit."

"Maybe you're right about me," Batman lamented regardless of the clown's perplexed expression. "About the both of us. But even if some part of me is like you…I'm not alone in this world. There is more to me than my own darkness." He clenched his fist, as though agreeing to a dare. "I won't become like you."

The Joker's eyes glittered suddenly in both understanding and amusement.

"But of course not, Bats," he said. "Where would the fun be in that?"

"Master Wayne?"

Batman slammed the door, hopefully fast enough to keep the clown's cackling from getting through.

"Yes, Alfred?"

"While I hate to interrupt whatever it is you're doing, it seems the floodlights are on. Do you intend to see to it?" Alfred said against the door, his voice full of curiosity. And then dipping into sarcasm. "Or should I?"

"I like this guy," whispered the Joker.

"Thanks for the offer, Alfred," said Batman. "But I'll see to it immediately."

"Of course, Master Wayne. In that case, be safe."

"I will be."

The Joker didn't even bother to wait for the man's footsteps to disappear before he piped in, "Speckle beckons?"

"Yes."

The clown pulled himself out from under the car and dusted himself off. "Let's do it."

"Stay here," Batman replied.

"Why do you even bother saying this stuff anymore?" the Joker guffawed. "Don't you know that the big corporations are destroying the rainforests? We can't be wasting oxygen on your silly reiterations. C'mon." He stepped in front the vigilante with his arms held appreciatively on either side of him, just hoping for a blow, if only for the sake of normality. "Batmobile. You know you want to."

The Joker earned Batman's stare for about a second before the man walked around him, throwing a ring of car keys over his shoulder.

"Don't crash the Porsche," said Batman just as he heard the Joker catch the keys.

And there was that nearly audible smile.

"Groovy."

Batman wasn't interested in keeping his eye on the Joker, mostly because it was only going to slow him down. And other things.

Gordon was waiting for him when he got there, his face frigid and cool from the side. When he realized Batman was standing in his peripherals, he turned, then looked about him for another more memorable face. Batman wished he could say he was done with that, but what would that prove?

"Alone today?" said the commissioner.

He was promptly ignored.

"What is it?"

Gordon must have sensed that Batman was not in the mood, because looked at him silently before he answered the question.

"There was a robbery at the morgue this morning," he explained.

Certainly sounded morbid enough.

"And?"

"Only one body was stolen."

Batman raised his eyebrow. "What does that have to do with me?"

"It was Alkahest's."

His eyes widened, but somehow he wasn't all that surprised. You got used to this stuff eventually.

"Did anyone see who did it?"

"Yes." Gordon rubbed beneath his eyes in exhaustion. "Unfortunately--"

"The man looked exactly like the body he was carrying out," Batman finished for him.

Instead of being bewildered, Gordon smiled. He was used to these things too.

"How did you know?"

"That seems to be a habit of Alkahest's," he explained. "Is there any clue to why he would do that?"

"I don't know—is there usually any sort of rhyme or reason to half the criminal's in Gotham? Still, there's something about it that makes me feel as though…" he sighed, and it was cold enough that his breath turned to fog. "Something's going to happen."

The turned abruptly when the door to the roof was thrown open with a loud slam, metal crashing against cement. To even mention who was standing there would just be another waste of ever-so-precious oxygen.

"How did you get up here?" Gordon snarled as the clown collapsed onto the ground and kicked the door shut behind him.

The Joker stared at the door for a few moments, then nonchalantly pulled himself to his feet and dusted himself off. No one bothered to ask.

"Pixie dust," he explained. "Very useful substance. Oh, and you'll notice there's a very large, blinking object latched to a wall down there? Don't worry, it just explodes confetti is all. And don't fret about that guy with the ugly hair—he only looks dead."

"You--!"

"I told you already, Gordon--" Batman tried to intervene, but he was promptly cut off.

"I know what you told me!" the commissioner snapped at the vigilante. "But that doesn't change that…It doesn't change that…" Gordon put his head in his hands. "You can't…trust him…"

"I know. You keep telling me. But I keep telling you, it's because I have to."

"Why?"

"I don't have a _choice_."

The Joker barely controlled a sneer.

"I think we're closing in on these men, Gordon. Don't worry. It's almost over."

The commissioner grabbed him by his arm before he could disappear, and it seemed that it was because of Batman's affinity for doing that that the man had taken the precaution.

"You will never do this again."

The vigilante controlled a smile. "Never."

Commissioner Gordon finally let him go, and he stepped to the ledge of the building. The clown groaned, seeing as how he'd just made it upstairs, but he could use the exercise. What were a few more broken stitches?

"You're not going to protect me on my way down?" he heard the Joker ask, and Gordon replied irritably, "Get down yourself."

Then he jumped.

He landed easily on a gargoyle protruding from the second floor wall, and waited until he saw the Joker stumble out of the building before he dropped to the ground. Even though he didn't receive so much as a backwards glance, he knew the Joker had seen noticed him and was aware of what he was supposed to do—take him to Alkahest. He tailed the car in the shadows—needless to say, the Joker was a dubious driver at best--regardless of the fact the Batpod managed to be nothing if not dissonantly conspicuous.

Brewster was a high class, down town suburban piece of city. The townhouses were old, and had the Arkham-like gothic style that was beautiful in the day, and eerie in the night. Alkahest was nothing if not stylish.

The Joker pulled up to one of the townhouses in a screeching halt that left skid marks and smoke. If it wasn't for the fact that he needed both his arms to steer, Batman would have slapped his hand against his face just to try and understand the Joker's definition of stealth.

"So, this is how the other half lives," Batman mused dryly as he pulled up beside the Porsche.

"Aren't you the other half?" said the Joker as he got out of the car. "Well, I suppose having another half sort of negates being the other half but the half-in-half principle remains."

"Thanks for not making sense," said the vigilante as he got up from the pod. The clown glanced the motorcycle through the corner of his eye, with a unique brand of amusement in his eyes that easily could have been his version of skepticism.

"Showing the meter maids what's what, eh?"

Batman pressed a button on his utility belt, and the batpod obediently rolled back its wheels and retreated down the streets, into the thin veil of fog that was beginning to form like a web between the buildings. The Joker stared at it as it went disquietingly away.

"I always knew I'd fall for someone with a nice car."

"It's not a car. Is this the place?"

"The ominous lighting does suggest as much. Still, this_ is_ Gotham. I won't be convinced until I see a robot with laser beam eyes."

Batman nodded absentmindedly as he stared up at the building. Finally, they could get the truth and end all of this. At least, that was what he hoped. Hoping for anything in times like these seemed childishly naïve, and he resented himself for it. And yet…

"'Stay here'," the Joker recited with a gurgle, taking the words right out from between Batman's lips. "Why are you trying to be my mother?"

"If there's a fight, you'll just rip your stitches again," and he put a very heavy emphasis on 'again', "and we'll have to retreat."

"Aww," the Joker swooned. "You would retreat for li'l ol' me? I didn't know you cared." The Batman gritted his teeth and naturally the Joker noticed and got a laugh out of it.

"Seriously, Bats," the clown advised as he walked up the steps to the building's entrance, "don't you ever get sick of living like you do?" he smiled. And strangely enough, it was a smile that was only a smile and nothing else. "Worry about your own problems first."

Batman looked away quickly and walked up the steps as well. They were millimeters from going inside before Batman realized the fatal flaw in their plan.

"This is a regular building," he observed, then sighed. "We can't go in like this."

"Like what?" asked the Joker. Batman's eyes scanned over the Joker's purple tweed suit, his bleached face, his bright red lips, and his slick green hair. He decided to let the ace figure it out on his own.

"I need something from the car."

"I'm honestly confused," the clown murmured mostly to himself. "What's wrong? Is it black tie? I have a green suit back at Arkham if you like."

"We won't need it." Batman opened the Porsche and dug under the front seat, easily lifting a secret compartment he'd installed there like he'd done in all his cars, just in case. He felt around, his hand bumping against an extra grappling gun, animal repellant for certain bird themed criminals, and finally—

He pulled the small, round ball, the dark casing giving it a pearly glow in the light.

--drowsy smoke bombs. A pain in the butt to synthesize, but good for escapes and making sure no one noticed you'd ever been where you had definitely left a hole in the wall..

"Now we can go in," he said, and in that moment, as he did not have a predisposition to stealth, the Joker tossed a streamer at the door. And naturally, it exploded as soon as it made contact, blowing the wooden frames inwards and breaking off the metal hinges in a flurry of smoke and confetti.

"Why?" Batman said to no one in particular as the two of them walked in. Thankfully, it was empty. And dark.

And dusty as an attic, save for the sweeping areas of cleanliness that one might leave behind if they were dragging their feet. They glanced around once, and the high, arched ceiling—before it broke to let the spiral staircase through—was empty of anything that remotely resembled a camera, and the room, with white marble floors and white walls and white metal railings on the stairs, was far too barren to hide anything, even in the suffocating gloom of the night.

"It's like he doesn't even care that we're after him," the Joker mused.

"Maybe he doesn't," said the Batman as he looked up the spiral staircase, though it only led into darkness.

"Why would someone not care if they were caught?"

The vigilante started to make his way into the next room. "You just asked that question to be ironic, didn't you?"

"Oh, look, you got me again, Batman. I'm so silly!"

Batman stopped in what must have been the true foyer, and it was large and lovely enough to be the lobby of a hotel. A wide crystal chandelier hung above them, and whenever they so much as breathed, the fixtures shook and dust floated down upon them like sleet. There was a fireplace on one side of the room that didn't seem as though it had ever seen light, and the lamplight from the window near it seemed to be deliberately casting itself only a few feet away. At the far end of the room there was an elevator that had stands on either side of it, decorated with vases that held dead plants.

"Now, if I were a mad scientist bent on destruction of the city and its people," said the Joker, "where would I hide my sanctum of evil?"

Batman glanced at him skeptically.

"I'm not a scientist," the clown corrected him, his voice high with the indignity of it.

"Close enough."

They both paused, the Joker's hand on his chin and the Batman's hands on his waist, and then they both realized it simultaneously: "Basement."

"Gotta love the clichés," said the Ace of Knaves with a snicker as they moved through the room. The windows there were interspaced, so they took turns standing in the darkness and the light—in the Joker seemed to be devoured when he stood in the white of the gibbous moon, and the Batman was engulfed by the shadows.

For some reason, it was less than surprising when they called up the elevator and the doors opened, only for the Joker to nearly walk straight out into an empty shaft. If Batman hadn't reflexively reached out to save him, he probably would have been dead. Then again, the Joker seemed to have a tab with gravity.

Gravity was presently knee deep in debt.

While the Joker was giggling away his adrenaline, Batman took his pocket flashlight from his belt, flicked it on, and promptly dropped it down the shaft. It fell for maybe two stories before clanging on metal. That must have been the top of the malfunctioning elevator.

"We have to go down here," said Batman. He started to pull out his grappling gun. "It's the only way, by the looks of it."

Abruptly, the Joker grabbed him by his arm and held on with aggressive tightness. He had to hand it to the Joker for taking a bad situation and making it as uncomfortable as he could. "Don't go, Bats."

_Ugh._

"Why not?"

"You're wearing black."

Batman humored him in asking what that had to do with anything.

"Don't you know it's always the one in black who dies _first_?"

He ignored him but let him continue gripping stupidly onto his one arm as he shot the grapple gun so it took hold on one of the ledges of an upper floor and began to lower them both slowly down. The Batman clenched his jaw and didn't say anything about how much he hated how close the clown was to him, to his face, or his mask, or whatever it was that the Joker had already seen and already knew. And yet the fear of being seen yet again was almost terrifying in its intensity.

He was shaken loose from his fear when the Joker spoke, and did so without looking

"I wish you were Spider-man," said the Joker. "At least then this would guarantee me a kiss."

"Drop it or I'll drop you."

That was enough to keep the Joker laughing the rest of the way down. When they touched the bottom floor, Batman picked up his flashlight, put it on his belt in such a way that it shone ahead of them, before prying open the elevator doors with his bare hands.

The smell of must and grime in the basement was enough that if Batman hadn't stepped in there of his own volition, he might have thought he'd woken up in coffin. You could hear the skittering claws of rats as the light moved around the room, illuminating the soot on the floor and the moss that was beginning to grow between the crags in the bricks. Compared to the picturesque world upstairs—dying plants and dusty chandeliers-- it seemed an honest purgatory to the façade of heaven.

The basement, while it did have several crates lying about, some moth-eaten dresses, and a few broken nothings in the corners, there seemed very little indication that there was anything that led anywhere. But for the sake of tradition, he was inclined to believe that Alkahest had hid something in that room.

"Look around," he said. "There's probably a switch or a trapdoor somewhere, or…" when he didn't even get an unhelpful snicker, paused. "Joker?"

He turned to look at the clown, deeply perturbed by the silence, and saw the man was staring intently at the top of the elevator. Batman narrowed his eyes in confusion, but instead of questioning it outwardly, he followed the Joker's lead. It really was strange that it was simply stopped there. It didn't seem to be broken either—it was just stuck. Hanging. Over nothing. Like the car plugging the cookie jar to deter children.

"You don't think…" he breathed.

"Who really has time for thinking these days?" said the Joker, and happily snatched the batarang from Batman's belt before promptly hurling it at the elevator's cable. The noise it made when it fell another five stories, the remainder of the pulley screeching above them just before it hit the ground in a crash reminiscent to two cars colliding, horns blaring, with a t-rex and a volcano in the background, was, needless to say, spectacular.

"Unnecessary," Batman croaked.

"Meh," the Joker shrugged, and motioned for the Bat to lower the both of them down. Sadly, he had little say in the matter.

Lucky for them, the elevator had been practically compressed when it hit the bottom floor, so they were able to fit under the elevator door without too much trouble, though the Joker made an deep effort of complaining about his stitches as he pulled himself through.

When Batman got a load of the place, he realized, if the townhouse was heaven and he basement was purgatory, then this must have been hell.

The room was a sterile, blinding white, to the point it actually made Batman feel as though he was dirty. The fluorescent lights above them buzzed monotonously, humming to a dark and dire tune. Stretching from one end of the room to the other where it disappeared into an indiscernible pallor, were tanks. They were set up in two rows, and went one after the other, held in place by a mass of pale steel and white wires.

Suspended in the center of each tank, eyes shut and bodies limp, were people. Or rather, the same person. Though there were small differences—the clothes, the hair, the scars—they were all without a doubt duplicates of Alkahest Promethia.

"So people jars do exist," the Joker said softly as they began to wonder forward, their steps making an ominous clicking as they went. "I'd prayed it wasn't a myth."

"Oh," breathed Batman when he saw a duplicate that's face was painfully serene. He was disheveled, blood was spattered on one of his cheeks, his clothes were ripped, and yet he seemed so content with it you barely even noticed. But the limbs hung off of him in such a twisted, unnatural way, Batman recognized it immediately.

"It's the Alkahest that fell in the lab." He turned his head to the next one, which was entirely naked and had a dark wound on its torso. "And this is the one you stabbed. That was stolen from the morgue."

"And looky here!" said the Joker. "It's the one whose head I popped!"

Batman didn't turn to observe that one.

They kept walking down and down, seeing more. Some were riddled with holes or knife wounds, others seemed as though they didn't even deserve to be here at all. But they went on and on, until slowly the duplicates were interspersed with empty tanks. To say Batman didn't understand would be an understatement. It was one thing to go out and let these things die for you, but to then go out again and retrieve the bodies? Why was that even necessary?

What possible motive could a person have for storing clones as though they were gherkins? And by the looks of it, all of these seemed to have died by less than natural means. What good was a murdered being?

Finally, the rows came to a halt, and he took the time to stare at the final tank, attached to the final wall, twice the size of any of the others. Inside was suspended a woman. She was wearing a cocktail dress and pearls, and her shoes were still floating on her, if only barely. She had fair skin and black hair that fell in thick curls just above her shoulders, and her eyelashes were long enough that they gave the illusion of lying on her cheeks as she slept. Whether she was dead or alive, it was impossible to tell, but he did know that it should have been a kinder night when she'd had to come into this place.

"Beautiful, isn't she?"

Both the Joker and the Batman turned only very slowly, merely because the voice that greeted them had the feel of one that was the care-taker and not the guard. Batman hadn't been expecting what he got, however, though at this point that seemed to indicate that he was actually very naïve.

The man before them had a face that was almost entirely twisted and torn in mounds of dark scar tissue, as though he'd been mauled then thrown in a fire. His left eye was clear, blank white between the masses of swollen flesh, giving no hint that it had ever been able to see, and his right eye had a strange cataract that left half of it the disquieting blue of blindness, and the other half a pure and liquid black. He wore winter clothes—a long coat and scarf, and his hair was dark and shiny, though it was mussed and in need of a cut. For one reason or another, the vigilante had the strange impulse to tell him he didn't belong where he was. He wanted to tell him to go home.

The man regarded them without hostility, and there as almost a welcoming air to him that made the Bat reconsider his original decision to knock him out. This wasn't a good idea, but a quick escape would be nigh impossible given the fact the Joker was there. Sometimes it was better not to look the gift horse in the mouth.

"Who are you?" Batman said slowly and gently extended his hand to show that he had no intention of doing anything violent.

"Who's the girl?" Joker said over the vigilante.

The scarred man smiled at both of them—as best he could with his twisted lips—and began to walk closer. His shoes made a gentle sound as he did, and his movement did not seem remotely harsh.

"I'm a defect," he answered simply, before he glanced at the woman and his expression softened. He lifted his hands to blow in them, though the room was no particularly cold. "Her." He said, "She was a nobody. A woman with no job, no friends, no life—one sad day away from losing her house. Nobody cared when she disappeared." His eyelids rose and fell rapidly, and it was a wonder whether he was holding back emotion or pushing back dirt. "When she was murdered."

"Did you murder her?" asked Batman.

The man seemed deeply taken aback by this and recoiled physically as soon as he processed the accusation.

"No, no. I…we…" the man put his hand on his broken face, the haze of bemusement clouding his misty eyes. "He loved her. More than anyone."

"What's your name, ugly?" asked the Joker.

The scarred man grunted faintly and clenched his fist as he tried to get a grip on himself, but whether he was succeeding or not was anybody's bet.

"I…we…he…me…I am…someone," he rasped. "I'm not sure…who…because I'm not…the original. I am…"

"Twist," the Joker said. For one reason or another, the name fit.

"You're alone here," Batman observed. "Why? What is this place?"

"It's not—"

"Why are you involved with Alkahest Promethia?"

Twist blinked at the mention, and then suddenly something must have clicked inside his head because when he spun to the Joker, it was in the heat of realization.

"It's you," he breathed, then his head snapped towards the woman. "You're…going to save her. He told me that. Or…it was inside him. He was dreaming of it." He took a step towards the Joker. "Thank you."

"Don't let it touch me, Bats," the clown hissed.

"You know this man?"

"Yes," Twist answered Batman.

"Then you know Alkahest is waiting for him."

The man smiled again. "Very patiently. He's been expecting you both for a long time."

"The both of us? Why?"

He touched his head again. "I…don't know. Do you want to ask him?"

Batman went stiff. He took in Twist's skin and his clothes and his warped and bent smile, and there was a kind sort of innocence in him that knew absolutely nothing of betrayal. It seemed cruel to put your trust in the worldlesness of others, but what more could a person like him do? He had his limits too.

So, he answered, with the Joker's grin floating encouragingly in his peripherals, "I do."

……………………………………………

The reviews. The favourites. The alerts. The bloody hits. I dunno, it's just like you guys are awesome, all of you, and I'm not sure how to express that beyond thank you. Which is really meager, but the internet tends to suck that way.

Still.

I love you.

I'm sorry this chapter sort of trudged along the way it did, but…my lack of a plan came to bite me in the butt again today. Also, I'm too lazy to edit so I'm really sorry. I would have finished it in this chapter, but then I realized that it would make the chapter too long so I decided against it. The conclusion draws nearer. Which may very well be a lie, but…we'll see what happens. It promises to be more interesting and exposeing next chapter at the very least, I assure you.

Anyway, thanks again for reading!


	7. Chapter 7

It was quiet.

Too quiet.

Batman had read that in many places many times, always smirking quietly at the well-worn cliché and occasionally muttering it to himself for the sake of irony. However, had it not been for the knowledge that uttering it out loud would have brought an encouraging snicker from the Joker, it would have seemed too perfect not to say. One usually at least expected a cricket or an ominous wind in any given place—lairs had a tendency to respect that much at least. As Twist led them through Alkahest's…'home', all that was to be heard was the click-click of the Joker's wingtip shoes. The white world Alkahest had built for himself extended far beyond the tank chamber, and the strange deaf-muteness of it all made everything deeply, disturbingly raucous. The Batman and the Joker, one bathed in black the other bright with colour, must have seemed like screams against the walls.

Twist, however, moved through the place with easy steps, a smile that could only be described as one of contentment lying placidly on his lips, and it was clear that he very much did view this place as home. Batman realized after a time that Twist's hands, what one could see of them beneath his coat and weren't warped by burn scars, were as pale as the rooms that surrounded him. It wasn't the sort of pallor people were born with—it was the sort of pallor that was gained over time and came just before the body snapped in two. It was a wonder if Twist had ever been outside the walls that were stacked up all around him.

"Twist," Batman said, and the man turned to him slowly. He was already used to the nickname—the Joker had apparently attempted to beat it into Twist's head with a stick, and had said it repeatedly until he'd finally bored himself into submission. "Are you part of the duplicate program?"

Twist's strange, broken eyes narrowed. In him, when the scar tissue of his face bent and warped to accommodate the action it seemed almost sinister. In a regular person, it would probably have brought the welcoming wrinkles of laughter to the edges of his eyes. "Yes," said the duplicate. "I am. How did you know?"

"I just…I wanted to understand. How is it that you're able to function? You're not Alkahest at all, are you?"

"I can't say. Only he…" He shook his head again. "…only they can understand. I'm just a defect. I can't know anything."

"Don't you get sick of calling yourself a 'defect'?" The Joker moaned irritably. "It takes all the fun out of other people doing it for you."

"Do you know why Alkahest made you?" Batman prodded. He needed to get all the information while he still could. Villains were wizening up nowadays—they weren't all that into telling every little aspect of their crazy plans anymore. It had gone long out of fashion. Coercion, as well, didn't sit as well on Batman's heart as it might have once upon a time, but if push came to shove, he'd have to pull out the gloves.

"I thought he'd told you," said Twist in surprise. "We were made to kill you."

Batman's eyes widened in confusion and bewilderment, but there was no time to make the duplicate qualify himself. The floor creaked and rumbled beneath the three of them, and then a ring became evident around them when for a second it stopped, and began to drop. It moved quickly, fast enough that the flashing lights in the shaft blurred into a line, and the coats and capes they were billowed up about them to give the illusion of flying. While Batman stared coldly at Twist, whose expression was ambivalent and oblivious as to why the word's that had rolled off his tongue were cruel, and The Joker squealed in delight at it all.

The stop they came to was slow, though the Joker and Twist still shuddered when it was stopped completely. A sliding door parted before them, reminiscent to that of an elevator, and as the Batman stepped out behind Twist, he knew that this was it.

"Finally," a man's voice echoed through the chamber. "You made it."

They stepped into a pale blue light that fell on gleaming metal floors from the high, shining ceiling. Lights flickered between the thick, metal cords and thin wires that hid the wall, and all lead along the curved roof towards a single point in the center of it all. There, hanging from the roof and touching the chamber floor like a birdcage, was a bizarre structure that had no hint of humanity in its build. A man was held, trapped, within it, his arms held out on an angle and bound there by large steel rings the grew progressively large as they returned to the machine itself. His legs, too, were entirely invisible inside the wide metal sheath that bound the two of them together and kept him rooted to the floor. Thin tubes, like IV drips, went into the metal casings that held him up, taking fluids back and forth between the and the walls, and Batman had a hunch that was all that was keeping him alive.

Though only his face and torso were truly visible, you could tell that his entire body was bare except for his scars. His hair was red, and was growing long and unkempt where it sat on his shoulders, concealing his bowed head. His body, though you could see there'd once been muscle, was beginning to grow thin and emaciated with disuse.

It was a man on the brink of dying, but as he looked up, he was grinning with his Glasgow smile long before his lips spread to show his teeth.  
Where the duplicate's had black eyes, this man's eyes were blacker still, and were far deeper than any abyss.

"You're Alkahest Promethia," Batman whispered as they came to a stop before the man.

"You look surprised," the man said. His voice appeared to come from everywhere. "Perhaps you were expecting a man."

"If you've really been expecting us," said the vigilante while the Joker 'oo'd and 'aww'd over his surrounding, "then you know we're here to stop you."

"Ah, so the defect must have told you." He glanced at Twist, and the duplicate smiled obligingly. "Talkative isn't he? Well, I'd assumed since you were far too persistent to die outside of my reach, I'd have to carry it out on my own." His eyes glinted on the Joker. "As though I didn't notice that card you stapled to my duplicate's back. You would never have been able to find me otherwise. True, I know you're here to _try_ and stop me, but in the end of the day, that's all you will be able to do. He snickered. "'_Try_'."

Without warning, a dozen of the tanks from the upper floor dropped from the ceiling around Alkahest. Batman watched in confusion as the liquid suspending the dead duplicates filtered out, leaving them to hold themselves up. Batman didn't understand what Alkahest was meaning to prove by bringing them here, and wasn't expecting much in the ways of explanation. On the other hand, seeing the duplicate's eyes snap open one by one was more than enough.

"What is this, the sixties?" Joker breathed as the duplicates slowly clambered out of the tanks, their bodies dripping with fluid, and their expressions each individual and cruel. This wasn't possible, in the same way Twist wasn't possible. Lucius had said that the duplicates weren't independent—they needed the core mind, Alkahest, to survive. Moreover, there couldn't be more than one functioning at any given time. It didn't make sense. None.

"How are they doing that?" Batman breathed, keeping his voice calm as he ran through explanations. "They shouldn't be alive, let alone working."

"So you really did take the plans for the duplicates, didn't you?" the true Alkahest snickered. "Well, I suppose I left it out in the open. It's my own fault. Good thing I kept my more interesting discoveries to myself." He nodded to Twist, and the sole kind looking duplicate bowed his head obligingly.

"Do you know what happened to him?" Alkahest went on. "He was caught in a…troublesome explosion at the lab while I was using his particular vessel to experiment with several dangerous compounds. As you can see, it didn't do him a whole lot of good. But it did kill him—he was physically dead for over a minute. However, then he was resuscitated, and he was…different from me. His link with me had been broken—he was his own person." He grinned. "Turns out if the duplicates die, if they're able to come back to life they become newer versions of me, as it were. Mine, but themselves as well. Save for the defect," he said with contempt, "who is hopelessly separate from us. I'm sure you already noticed my personality is different from those you encountered in the others, mostly because the majority of those you met were fake. All it took was a little work, and I was able to make the fluid you saw them in. A functional cure for mortality. Admittedly, they're artificial humans, so repairing them is slightly easier. Which is why you're here. If you die, I know the cure, the true cure, will come to me. _I know it_."

The Batman shoved the Joker out of the way just in time to get knocked in the stomach by one of the duplicates. The one the Joker had stabbed. His eyes were twinkling with hatred and vengeance, but even as he and the Batman tussled with one another on the floor, deep within him was hope as well.

"What should I do, Bats!" yelled the Joker as the rest of the duplicates began to advance. "Should I summon the cops?"

"Get out of here, idiot!" yelled Batman, knocking the duplicate off of him and jumping to his feet only to have to fend off three more at once. It wasn't something he hadn't done before, but they were skilled. And in them, those that had met him seemed to remember just what they were up against and were taking precautions in each of their movements, so much so that every punch and kick he landed on their weak spots appeared almost to be luck on his part. "You're the one they want, remember!"

The Joker looked back and forth stupidly, his window of escape getting smaller and smaller as the duplicates approached, before he took a step back, spun around, and very purposely tripped over his own two feet. The Batman realized then that the Joker had more interest in aggravating him than getting to safety. Maybe it went without saying, but the clown's priorities were screwed up.

"Oh, woe is me!" the green-eyed man cried dramatically as a pair of duplicates snatched him by his arms and forced him to his knees. "I fought long and hard, but it was no use. I am…" he threw back his head, probably trying to make a sweeping motion with his hair though its bristly nature refused to allow it, and then with a final, painful moan, he dropped his head, "…defeated…"

If it wasn't for the fact it would be against his morals, and somewhat counterproductive, Batman would have killed him himself. Seeing as how he now had no other option, he allowed his arms to be caught, allowed himself to be wrestled to the floor, because he realized Alkahest was exactly the type of person who enjoyed pointless theatrics regardless of the logic involved thereof. The sneer the man had on his face indicated that he thought this had been an easy victory. As though a million other criminals hadn't thought the exact same thing a million times before. There was one thing different about Alkahest, though—he'd definitely had a conscious. It hadn't been lost in flames or a vat of chemical waste or drugs. He wasn't some lunatic to be pulled off the streets and thrown into Arkham. He was still a man.

"So this is how easily the great Batman is reduced to nothing?" said Alkahest in amusement. "I was expecting something a bit more cathartic. I suppose it would be too much trouble to have you actually fighting back. This does make things a world easier."

"You were a medical scientist," said Batman, his eyes narrowed up at Alkahest. "How could you turn to this?"

The grin was wiped from Alkahest's lips nigh instantaneously. Still, the fact that the scar stayed persistently there made it seem as though he was still laughing. As though he were caught with the shadow of a smile.

"Yes," he rumbled, eyes thin with rage. "I was. I was…a protector…a preserver…of _life_. I was never corrupted by money-hungry pharmaceuticals, I was never swayed by the highest bidder." He snickered. "And yet, for all the people I'd saved, the world couldn't allow me one single joy. Not one little bit of light. I should have known better. It was because of her—because I was drenched in her light that the world picked me out. The world aims to crush everyone. The one's who are standing in the spotlight are just easier to see. Which is why darkness, absolute as oblivion, is all that prospers. I fear it's the same here today." He looked at the Batman with a cold, calculating mirth that made chills run up his spine. "Even though you pretend to maraud around in the dark, you too are bathed in the light." His body twitched and his eyes began to shut. "It's time we rectified that."

The sound of the gun shot was muffled and small, only slightly deeper than the sound of lips popping, and the blue ray of light that accompanied Alkahest's weaponry spread before Batman, dissipating before it touched the floor. Naturally—foolishly?—he didn't know who'd been shot until, bit by bit, he felt blood beginning to flow inside his suit.

He gasped and buckled on the ground, trying to keep the pain from making his vision blur. Who'd shot him? He'd never have faked a forfeit with his back open. He'd counted just to be sure he'd made no mistake—two duplicates were holding Batman, two the Joker. The other eight were standing in his line of sight. A few of them were snickering, a few others stared on with a frigid contempt. Those that remained were far beyond feeling, and long past being human. There was a tightening in his stomach when he realized he'd lost track of Twist.

He turned his head so he could glance behind him, though the movement caused him to choke. There was a wrongness in the way Twist stood, holding a gun up with both hands and staring at it in perturbation, as though he'd never encountered such a foreign object, and had no idea what it could do. However, his arm slung around Twist's shoulders and with one hand still on the gun, was standing Alkahest. In his eyes Batman could see that it was a duplicate that held the true Alkahest, in the outfit Batman had first met him in. All black, as though he'd been consumed by it.

From somewhere, and it sounded awfully far away, he heard the Joker murmur, "Bats."

"Which begs the question," Alkahest glanced at his own limp and lifeless body where it was suspended in the machine. He removed his hand from the gun, and as soon as he did, Twists arms started shaking. "Don't you think it was a little bit naïve to purposely get caught? Just a little?"

"What…" Batman croaked, but that was all he managed to get out. How could he forget something so obvious? As though Alkahest would just lie around in that machine and miss out on the action when he had a million substitutes that he could use to take the damage without ever really feeling it.

"What's this?" Alkahest snickered. He walked around Batman and got to his haunches in front of him. "Did you think I was some sort of greenhorn idiot?"

Batman didn't agree because it seemed that it would indicate more about his own intelligence than Alkahest's. Maybe outsmarting mad scientists on a day-to-day basis had made him a little cocky. A little stupid. This was not the right time for that to come around and bite him in the ass, though. Any time but now would have been fine. Why really did have the bad habit of being a bastard.

"It can't be helped, I guess," Alkahest said. He returned to his feet, and walked around the room, moving past the Joker as he did. The expression on the Joker's face, while still a grin, was not one of joy. Truth be told, whatever emotion the clown must have been feeling was utterly unnameable.

"Well, while I have no personal qualms with either of you," said Alkahest, a particularly poignant smile falling on the Joker, which left Batman wondering how much of that sentence was a lie, "you're both slightly responsible for the deaths of many of the people in this room. So, forgive me. We'll enjoy this."

Sometimes, being stubborn was more of a pain than anything, and at times like these it was best to know when you'd overstayed your welcome. Batman blindly released the blades in his gauntlet. Most of them missed by miles, but the two duplicates that were holding him both got hit by at least one and they snarled as he was able to pull himself free from them. He knocked them both to the floor just as he was advanced upon by several others, but he managed to hold his own despite the fact that bit by bit he was bleeding out.

"Joker!" he yelled as he tried to keep the duplicates down long enough to claim victory, but they were a hundred times more troublesome than regular humans.

Alkahest had said 'the both of them'. Batman was taking on the bulk of the attack, but not everyone was concentrating on him. The Joker's body wasn't reinforced with Kevlar and titanium coated tri-weave fibers. If he was beaten hard enough, he, as though he were human, would break in two.

Batman knocked away two other duplicates, and spun around to see that Alkahest was no standing in front of the Joker. The clown's hands were no longer being held, and if he'd chosen, he would probably have been able to stand. He seemed to have no interest in it, though, and so Alkahest went down to his level.

"I was told that you had a wound from one of your encounters with us. A gun shot wound to the side, am I right?" Alkahest extended his gloved hand to the clown, as though offering kindness. "Allow me. I am a doctor after all."

"I'm flattered," said the Joker, "but I'm spoken for."

He sent a conspicuous wink towards the Batman, which the vigilante could only receive with mortification. It was certainly caused him enough grief that he got clocked in the side of the head as a result, and just barely managed to regain his footing.

Alkahest seemed to find this equally as humorous as the Batman did, and after a few seconds of staring at the clown, he stood.

"Is that so," said Alkahest. His lip twisted and his hands went into his pockets. "Well that really is," without any warning, he swung his foot into the Joker's wound with a cold precision, and the stitches instantly broke to let red stain the Joker's shirt, "tragic."

The Joker gasped, cut himself off with a laugh, and then he curled into himself, the smile he always had seeming to be more amused at how unfunny this was than anything else. "Ooh," he half chuckled, half hissed, "that…really smarts…"

"Ah." Alkahest nodded. "So the Ace of Knaves _can_ feel pain. I had always wanted to know."

"Actually," the clown replied, and something rolled from inside his sleeve into his palm, "I just started to wonder the same thing about you."

Alkahest easily sidestepped the exploding streamer the Joker hurled at him, and it instead collided on the back of a duplicate that had been none the wiser. Alkahest didn't look behind him as the explosion echoed through the room, smoke and flame bursting from the point of contact, and the duplicate was hurtled into the wall before hitting the ground heavily in a crumpled, bleeding heap. He didn't get up.

"Yeesh," the Joker said irritably. "Some people just can't take a joke."

"Such is the nature of a critic."

The Batman was mercifully distracted by a blow to his stomach just as the duplicate standing behind the Joker took a police baton from his waist and raised it above his head.

Enough was enough. Killing off individual copies was pointless, and trying to attack them all at once was impossible. He needed to cut Alkahest off at the source. He spun to the suspended body and pulled out his batarang. If he wounded it, maybe even just a little, it would recall its mind from the duplicate. If Batman could do that, then incapacitate him, he knew the other duplicates would surrender, merely because they all seemed to know where their loyalties lay. He jumped up before any of his attackers could realize it and used one of their shoulders as leverage to launch himself into the air so he could get a clean shot at Alkahest's body's chest from above. He was a millisecond away from throwing the batarang and ending this—a millisecond—but he was knocked into by the legs and toppled worthlessly to the ground in a heap, the batarang screeching along the floor as it skid out of reach.

He looked up in dismay to see it was Twist heaving on the floor beside him, his arms spread beneath him as he tried to pull himself up.

"You can't hurt him," said Twist and even behind the twisted features there was desperation. "He hasn't saved her yet. You have to leave him alone, alright? Or I will…we will never see her again. And we have to see her again. We must."

It was his first instinct to call Twist a fool, but he was unable to, because hoping uselessly for things he couldn't have was his hobby too.

"You don't understand," Batman rasped, and the blood loss was finally getting to his head. "If I don't do this, innocent people will get hurt."

"It's alright, then, isn't it?" Twist said with the faintest, most dire of smiles. "That's not very many people, then, is it?"

Batman grunted as he was knocked in the back of the head with a gun butt, and his quickly emptying mind began to pour its contents out of him. He tried to get himself together, to at the very least will himself to stand, but he'd forgotten how. His arms rattled as he tried to push them under himself, but he was only kicked in the stomach and forced onto his back. Looking up, all he could make out within his swirling vision were Alkahest's pitch black eyes.

"Would you look at that," the scientist said, his eyes flashing on Twist. "Even broken objects are good for _something_."

"Why…?" Batman breathed. There were a million more words in that sentence, but if he'd once been able to say them, now he was weak. One word at times, however, was more than enough.

"Why?" Alkahest repeated in bewilderment. "_Why?_ Because even in this filthy city, there are those of us who care about retribution!" he explained. "Because there are those of us who know when something needs to change. There are those of us…" He faltered and was listless, gazing off into nothing for something that wasn't there. "…who have things we can never give up."

"And you…uphold your morals…with murder?" Batman challenged, searching for a little guilt for him to mold to his liking. He was surprised when the answer he got was very, very simply.

"Yes. That's the only option."

No. No. There must have been something else. Alkahest couldn't be that single-minded. No one was that single-minded. He had to have something that would wrench at him, something he would fear. Something precious, something that…

Batman blinked.

…he could never give up.

"That woman…" he said remembering the woman in the tank, realizing there must have been a reason she was being kept inside. Alkahest's eyes widened because he knew there was no one else Batman could be referring to. "That woman. What would she say…if she saw…you'd become this way? How could you possibly…look at yourself…knowing she could never love what you've become?"

Alkahest yanked the vigilante up by the neck of his cowl, and though electricity surged up and down his arms from the defense mechanism that he'd triggered, he didn't seem to feel it.

"Shut up!" He yelled, and around him, the duplicates shifted in silent understanding. "It doesn't matter if she loves me or not! It doesn't matter if she stays with me! If I had to choose, I would much rather she be alive…" He gritted his teeth, rage mixing with desolation and flowing out like fire in his words. "…_much_ rather she be alive than in love. I need her to exist! I need to know she has a life out there! That she's happy! That she's okay. Or she'll turn to nothing! She'll be forgotten." His grip weakened and his eyes narrowed in disdain. "Even the one other person in this room who did meet her…doesn't remember. But she did exist. And I will prove it by bringing her back." The Batman was dropped to the floor, discarded. "By _any _means necessary."

Alkahest's steps moved around him, and he had no will to follow them.

"Don't worry," said the scientist, and the serrated edge of his voice had not dulled. Batman saw the Joker lying on the white tile infinitely far from him. He was on his side, back turned to the Bat, and in a heap. There was red spreading from his head, through his hair. It was almost a funny thing to see—red and green. Stop and go. "You arrived prematurely, so I can't kill you off just yet." Batman was knocked in the stomach again, what fragile armor he had rendered useless in his state of disrepair. "But fear not," Alkahest promised, and his eyes glowed in the flashing lights all around them. "It will be soon."

As darkness leaked into his vision and the noise of his breaths became unbearably loud, he stared at the violet clothed back before him. Far off and deep inside, what little bit of will Batman had left he extended towards the Joker, and his final bit of strength left when he croaked far softer than even God could hear, "Laugh."

………………………………………………………………………………

………………………………………..

………

….

…

Why am I such a liar!

It's weird. I have this whole plan in my head and its like, okay, here it is. This is what's going to happen. Over, done with. And then its like, BAM! Eight pages. I'd only meant for this to be intro, for God's sake, and there was all this stuff I wanted to write but…yeah.

If it wasn't for the fact that seemed like such an awesome, cliff hangery way to end a chapter, I might have extended it. But…I suck, so, whatever.

And, would you look at that, this chapter has cleared up nothing at all! Okay, next chapter, there will honestly exposition. I hope. I can't imagine how I could get sidetracked on the next chapter, I honestly don't.

Still, I looked back at my first chapter and I was all WTF, what the hell were you thinking? There was absolutely no aim there. I'm glad I was able to take some nonsense musing and make something out of it.

I guess this sort of abides by all those people who asked me to continue a few more chapters. Subconscious acting up? I'll never know.

Nevertheless, thank you again for your support and loyal readership! By the way, I mentioned last chapter that the internet means that I can't physically thank you for anything? Not true! Though it's not a lot, I drew a picture for you awesome people—you can find it on my profile page. It's not the single most awesome thing you'll ever see, but I felt compelled nonetheless. Thank you!


	8. Chapter 8

He woke up.

It was simple but a sudden, miraculous thing that, to be honest, he'd gone to sleep not expecting to experience again.

He tried to take a breath, but his lungs were constricted. It wasn't as though they were being crushed—it was a familiar tightness. Bandages? If they were, then who would have dared to attempt that? Initially, he tried to open his eyes, but even the pale silver streak that came through his eyelashes was enough to make him blind. He grunted against what little light there was, and then didn't move as he tried to pull himself together.

"I told them," a familiar voice chuckled beside him. "I told them, doesn't matter if he's been out for days. He's just resting, I told them. You're too stubborn to kick the bucket, aren't ya, bats? Always knew that about you. They have a word for that type of person: incorrigible. You're my incorrigible bat. I have to say, I was pretty envious of Pugly for getting to see you shirtless, but then Awesome Jr. one and two chained you up right next to me. I never knew they were such a bunch of dears."

"Where are we?"

"Use your sonar and find out."

Batman opened his eyes.

He'd been expecting some dungeon, a chamber. Something remotely threatening—elaborate death traps that only came into action after the vigilante had regained enough of his cognition to escape were very frequent. This was none of that. It wasn't even slightly frightening.

It was a bedroom.

It seemed as though it had been completely untouched for years.

There were cobwebs in the corners, mold beginning to form by the pipes protruding from the wall, and most of all, there was a thin layer of glittering dust settled over everything. The bed, big enough for two, was still unmade from years before, drawers and cupboards hung open, woman's clothing—tight jeans, underwear, a tank top—were strewn on the floor in such a way that it seemed they'd been tossed from someone changing. On the dresser, there were five-dollar perfume bottles open, a tie strewn lengthwise over the wood, and photographs of Alkahest and the woman who was now resting in the tank. They were smiling; happy. And you could see in their expressions alone that they were 'together'. Or had been.

It was as though they had stumbled into a place no one would ever want to leave.

As Batman looked around, though the scent had grown old and stale, he realized that this room had the smell of home.

With that, he was finally, truly able to see.

Both he and the Joker were handcuffed to a long gas pipe protruding from the wall. The cuffs had cut through Batman's gloves, and by now blood had dried along the gashes in his skin and pus was beginning to form along the edges. The Joker looked frailer than he usually did and just this close to emaciation, as though slipping closer and closer to mortality.

He assumed that the pair of them together looked like proverbial crap.

"Do you wish," the Batman breathed, "that you'd stayed behind now?"

The Joker blinked away some dust that had settled on his eyelashes and then he grinned. "Never."

Batman shook his head, disbelieving of this, every second of this. How was this happening? Against someone who was completely, utterly human, how was he going out like this? He chuckled a little, and even though he didn't know what was so funny, the Joker started laughing too. It was as though the pair of them were sharing some sort of sick little joke that only they could understand.

"We might not survive this," said Batman. "You or me." He shook his head. "We won't ever be able to fight in Gotham ever again, Joker."

"Oh dear," snickered the Joker, impossibly amused. "Is that a touch of relief I hear?"

The vigilante said nothing. Maybe he was relieved. Maybe he was tired.

He restrained a smile, pushed it down, tied it in a knot and shoved it down inside.

Yeah right. That wasn't it at all. It had nothing to do with that. One or the other, one of them had to go. He'd always figured they'd go together, too, but not like this. But that's how it had been from the start. This was how it would have always been. In the warped way that only the pair of them could possibly figure out, this was how it was supposed to be. He hated admitting it to himself, but if this was really 'the end' then why the hell not? Who did he have to wear a mask for now? Reading his thoughts, the Joker lowered his head, green eyes glinting.

"Don't worry about it, Bats," he said. "I understand. I'd be bored without you too." He looked to the moon, then to the floor. "By the looks of it, after this, I'll be bored for a long time."

Batman said nothing. To hear those words from the Joker, the man who was never unsmiling, made them seem too true to be possible. The clown furrowed his brow at the bat when he got no reply for his line, and then snickered more, loudly, incessantly.

"Yeesh, what's with that sour expression, Bats?" He said. "Can't you take a joke?" He looked to the door then, and to call his expression, to call the emotion in his eyes something as simple as stubbornness was an understatement. The fact was, the Joker was both petty and immature, and most of all, an absolute brat. If he did anything now, anything at all, then it was less so he could get a laugh out of it, and more so he could knock the teeth right out of Alkahest's stupid evil-genius head. He said as much too. "As though I'd let that guy get the last laugh. Worry not, my beautiful Bats. The Joker always has an ace up his sleeve."

"Like what?" asked Batman, incredulous. "They must have taken all your weapons away."

To this, the Joker chuckled.

The vigilante gritted his teeth.

"I don't know what you're thinking," he admitted. "I'll never be able to understand you. And," he breathed, "that frightens me."

"You're wrong," the ace of knaves replied. "You do know what I'm thinking. You just don't want to look. Well, either way, if the two of us do perish in a grand show of fire and brimstone tonight…I guess it's my duty to bring my half of the party."

The pair of them looked to the door, far too exhausted to be surprised. Twist stood before them, his expression muted, unmarred by his scars. He looked at them, barely seeing them, all but blind.

"He never came back in here," he murmured. Twist closed the door behind him, stood for a little while, then sat down. "He…we…we try to remember here, but she's…all his, isn't she?" He looked at the pair of them, quiet, sad. "When you die, she'll wake up, won't she? Like a trade?"

"No," Batman croaked. "Life doesn't work that way. You can't trade it."

"But I'm alive," said Twist, "we're all alive, because he killed all those bad people. It works."

"You're not real!" the Joker sneered. "That was a dumb luck gamble, Quasi!"

"He's right," said Batman, and it ached to admit it. "Killing us won't do anything. It won't help anyone, least of all you. Whatever Alkahest means to accomplish by killing us, it won't work. Let us go, and he'll persevere on his own. Trust me."

Twist didn't answer for a time, then he smiled faintly at the pair of them.

"We can't let you go. We're so happy you made it here," he said, unseeing eyes becoming cloudy with joy. "We're so happy."

The door was kicked open and a pair of duplicates marched in, faces stoic and heartless. Beside him, the Joker hissed and spat at the one duplicate as he roughly undid the cuffs and yanked him to his feet. The Batman was following him soon enough, and though a one on one would have been so easy in regular circumstances it would basically have been unfair, now he was weak and just barely shambling along before the duplicate who prodded him in the right direction.

Twist had gotten up and started walking with them, hands in his coat pockets, smiling. They walked out of the bedroom into a hall way littered with dirt and glass, down the spiral staircase, to the empty elevator shaft. All the while Twist sung happily, his voice echoing a million times on destitute tiles.

"If you see something that looks like a star,

"And it's shooting up out of the ground,

"And your head is spinning from a loud guitar,

"And you just can't escape from the sound,

"Don't worry too much, it'll happen to you,

"We were children once, playing with toys."

The Joker chuckled weakly as the duplicates tied ropes around them, keeping their arms tight against their sides, useless. Batman glanced at his wrists and frowned. All the blades had been removed from the gauntlet, leaving scratches along the part that once held them. At this point he realized it was naïve of him to believe that Alkahest would make foolish mistakes like that. It was strange, but he missed his usual, ineffectual rogues. At least with them, even if it wasn't apparent at first, there was always a way out. And now…now what? A part of him didn't even want to know. And yet another part was getting ready to barrel head first into whatever the future held.

"If you had just a minute to breathe,

"And they granted you one final wish," Twist's voice echoed down the elevator shaft as he and the Joker were lowered slowly down, down, down into that blinding white. Back and forth the sound bounced the walls, a million words from only a few. Over two meters from the ground, the duplicates simply dropped them. Batman managed to retain enough balance, even without his arms, that he landed on his feet. The Joker crashed headlong onto his shoulder, and for a time, unable to get up and too hurt to roll over, he just lay there giggling only to himself. The vigilante slowly, carefully, dropped onto his knees and stayed there like that, making sure the Joker wouldn't simply die there, smiling like the fool he was.

"Would you ask for something like another chance,

"Or something similar as this," sang Twist—he and the other two duplicates dropped down the entire height of the shaft, each landing easily on their feet as though the distance was nothing to them. The duplicate 'taking care' of the Joker didn't even bother getting him back on his feet. All he did was haul him over the shoulder like a sack and carry him off. Either he didn't notice it, or he didn't care that the Joker was starting to bleed down his back.

Batman followed, trying not care. The Joker was right. He needed to worry about his own problems, and right now, he was trying not to fall over as best he could. And yet, against all logic and judgment, the only person he could worry about this very moment, out of everyone he needed to save in the whole damned city, was that stupid Joker.

"Don't worry too much, it'll happen to you," the duplicate's voice rang down the pure white halls, making ripples in the empty tanks lining the walls, disturbing the woman suspended at the very end. "As sure as your sorrows or joys," They stood on that circle in the floor, and it dropped down before opening into the blue light, "And the thing that disturbs you is only the sound,

"Of the low spark of high-heeled boys."

Alkahest, the true and honest Alkahest hanging from that machine like a doll, smiled down at them from the end of his nose. From way up there looking down at them like cockroaches, he must have seen himself as a god. Every duplicate they'd encountered, every one they'd supposedly killed, stood around the pillar, looking up. Batman did as well. Above him, the once blipping and shining ceiling was drawn backwards like the shutter of a camera, revealing the wide expanses of the sky. The moon had become a crescent. Batman smiled morbidly at it because as far as he was concerned, the moon was smiling back. Figured. It was a perfect night for a bunch of crazies to go out on the town.

Alkahest, as though agreeing, said, "Isn't this a wonderful night for making plans?"

The Joker groaned when he was dumped on the ground and the duplicate hastily undid the knots binding him before he walked to the others, joining them in the circle. The duplicate leading Batman did the same. Twist stayed where he was, still humming, but he did not join Alkahest there in the center of the room; he was cruelly separated from them, different, existing in a world too far from theirs for him to ever make up the difference.

"Are you two looking forward to it?" the doctor asked.

Batman rubbed his wrists while the ace of knaves, unable to stand, got into a sitting position and crossed his legs, looking like a child eagerly waiting for story time. The thick line of blood flowing down his forehead melted with the colour of his lips, staining his teeth and his pure white skin.

Batman didn't know what Alkahest meant to do. Not truly. Not completely. How could he? But he knew he didn't want to wait to find out that he was not, as he'd so often been told, invincible.

"You can't do this," said Batman, all but choking on the words, knowing what he was doing was ridiculous. He was trying to choke a man off a ledge without knowing how far he meant to jump, or where he was jumping from. But that didn't matter. All these details were pointless now. He needed to stop this. He needed to do it now. "We won't let you."

"Oh, let it die, Batman," Alkahest chuckled. "The only reason you're alive as it is because I want you here to witness the city crumble before you, while you crumble too." He looked up at that grinning moon, so reminiscent of the the Joker's smile. "Can you imagine? This is this city's last night on Earth. Frightening, isn't it?"

"I'm shaking in my boy shorts," the Joker said, his voice mangled beyond belief.

Alkahest simpered, and it was the same obliging smile as Twist's. There was something deeply wrong with that.

"Impatient, Joker?"

"I'm waiting for you to get to the usual bit," the Joker waved his hand about. "You know, the part where you explain your dark and troubled past with teary eyes; the dead lover, drugs, sodomy, a gun—BANG, BANG, BANG!" The ace yelled, imitating guns with his hands, making the duplicates and Batman cringe. Alkahest just gave him an amused look, which the Joker happily returned. "Your descent into beating up old ladies and their grandkids in dark alleys at night, and then how your father issues made you think making a million of you and naming yourself 'toilet paper' was a good idea. Lay it on me! That _is _usually when Batman sucker punches the bad guy—a monologue would really help."

There was a chorus of snickers at the absurdity of every word dropping out of the Joker's mouth. Either he wouldn't accept it, or couldn't believe it, or he just thought, at the very least, they might as well go out smiling.

"Well, that would be interesting," said Alkahest, saying it as though he was only indulging in the fantasies of a foolish child. He looked at Batman. "Seeing if you could actually even attempt at harming me now. By all means, try," he challenged. "It will be very, very difficult."

The vigilante wasn't about to fight a battle he couldn't foreseeably win. This whole fight was slowly slipping into that place, but not yet. There was still time. There was still a chance to stop all this before it was too late.

"Listen to me, Alkahest," said Batman. "That woman down there…you're doing this because of her aren't you?" Alkahest twitched faintly, the duplicates murmured. Twist, barely able to understand, could only stand there smiling dumbly; a blissful, blind, and foolish man. "I know it's hard to let go…and it's hard to give up…but whatever Joker did to hurt her, you can't blame this city for-"

"Hurt?" Alkahest cut in suddenly, his expression a mask of confusion. All the duplicate's shifted, their eyes both accusing and disbelieving. "_Hurt? Her?_ Is that what you think this about? _Revenge?_ How petty!" He guffawed. "It has nothing to do with vengeance! If there's anyone I would want revenge against, it would be you!"

Batman froze, nonplussed, and Joker gasped, incensed. That sealed it—Batman didn't know anything. Not about Alkahest, about the duplicates, and not about the woman floating in the glass. All he knew was that Alkahest had to be wrong.

That was not how it was supposed to be.

"Me…?" croaked Batman, grasping feebly for words, for understanding. "We…we've never met."

"That doesn't matter!" The doctor cackled. "It's because you exist! I was hoping that you would perish after all this like everyone else will, but the fact you were delivered right to me?" His grin spread from ear to ear, overtaking that scar-smile though remaining just as twisted as its skin. "So much better! You know what, I'll tell you. I'll tell you 'why'. You're right! You deserve it. You deserve to know what you did wrong." He yanked an arm from the giant cuffs that secured it, revealing a fragile, calloused hand. "She was a worthless woman…" he chuckled, holding his palm out before him. "But it would be insincere if I said I didn't love her for it. I loved her so much that being around her made me stupid." He hand clenched into a fist, long nails bringing out blood. "Unforgivably so…" Alkahest pulled in a labored breath and pushed his hair out of his eyes. "I don't see why you protect this hideous city, Batman." He said. "When even walking home at night is a death wish…what's there to love?"

Batman almost fell to his knees when he was asked that. It was a good question, and he'd asked himself the same a million times before. But there was an answer anyway. It wasn't necessarily a good answer, but it was definitely the only thing that could possibly justify a city like this existing at all; it had nothing to do with love or hate. It had nothing to do with good or evil. The Batman did what he did for no other reason than that he had to. Perhaps if he didn't do it, if he stopped for just one second, failed just one more time, he would die. If he ever packed up and left this bastard city…if he forgot about it and left everything behind…he would die.

Whatever Alkahest saw in Batman's face made him laugh cruelly.

"It was just like this, you see. It was…a beautiful night. Do you know what happened to her? She was stabbed three times in the stomach!" Alkahest laughed. "But she wasn't dead yet! She wasn't! I would've been the same—just another casualty in the section of the newspaper nobody ever reads. I was this close to becoming the same." He looked at the Joker, and a convoluted admiration swelled in his gaze. "But then you came. I remember it better than anything. You looked surprised, then amused, then irritated. You muttered about being late, checked your watch, then said 'just this once'." The Joker scrunched his face up while he tried to recall the event, but you could see in his face that nothing at all registered. Alkahest didn't care though. He was still smiling nostalgically as though looking back on a happy memory. "I'd seen you on television, and in newspapers, and you always seemed so…dangerous. But out in the nighttime, you were just a strange man in a purple suit…with a terrible smile. But you killed those men so quickly, so easily, as though it was nothing. Except for that one. Just one. But then you looked at your watch again, and you said 'Darn.'" His lip curled in the utmost disgust as though he was tasting the sickly sweet flavor of the words themselves. "'The _Bat_ is _waiting_.'"

Alkahest leaned back and his black eyes seemed like coal, slowly burning up from the inside. "And you left. And even though he was alone…wounded…that thug who attacked us…was still unmerciful. I suppose if you'd stayed, you would have killed us all, but at least then she and I would be together. But I suppose that's really just sentimentality. It would have been nice…" he set that smoldering gaze upon the Batman "…if you didn't have to go."

Oh.

So that was it.

Batman furrowed his eyebrows tightly, disbelieving that this sort of thing was possible. That Alkahest had come into existence simply by chance. Just because…the Joker had been running after him…. The vigilante glanced at the ace of knaves and saw him laughing softly, hardly able to believe it himself, mouthing 'hilarious. Hilarious.' Maybe to him it was. So many people were paying for something that couldn't even be qualified as a mistake. That woman, floating dead in the tank, if she'd at least lived, then what? If the Joker had showed up five seconds earlier, then what? If he and the Batman were not constantly waiting for one another…then what?

_Oh._

He understood. This was his fault. Once again, for one more measly mortal, the world had been unkind. But he'd always understood: life was unfair. They all knew that, and Alkahest was only realizing it now?

"Fool," Batman hissed. "Do you think that excuses your actions? So the world can be an awful place at times…and this is your retaliation? I didn't do anything. Neither did the Joker. We're-"

"Innocent!" yelled the Joker with raucous laughter. "Really? Don't make me laugh! It has nothing to do with that, does it, Awesome?"

Alkahest smiled with what could only be described as pride.

"Heh, I'm glad you understand. Batman, have you noticed? Knowledge…is something you can only find while grasping in the dark." He cocked his head back, wondering if Batman could appreciate his words. "Do you think anything good in our world exists because of good people? You'd be wrong if you thought that. All the world's greatest people—do you think they were remotely kind? A million and one of the villains in this city-The Scarecrow, Mr. Freeze, and the Joker himself, all geniuses aren't they?" Alkahest sneered when Batman realized it. "Do you understand? The only way to accomplish true power…is under a veil of darkness. And with a few million corpses to drive me, then the heavens have no option." He sneered at the grinning moon above them. "They'll have to tell me how to save her." He looked to the Joker again, and this time it was the clown who played the role of heaven. "And if I kill you, if I usurp you, then I'll be the darkest of black. I'll be the be all and end all. I will be…she will be…immortal."

Gears creaked and groaned inside the floor, and slowly all of them rose upon it and everything the moon's light could touch in all directions would soon be cinders on the ground. Apparently Alkahest's lab went on for miles beneath the city, as they were back in its heart, little nothings amongst sky scrapers and spired towards. Something rose in the pillar of machines that Alkahest was bound to, something mighty as a cannon but large as a house, and it sat straight up, pointing at the sky. It looked like it was going to blast the stars out of heaven. Around it, the duplicates all smiled, just as their maker did, quietly elated. Behind them, Twist said nothing, staring on with such awe it seemed he could have cried.

Below them, the city lived. A happy shout echoed between skyscrapers, a siren's howl rose and died along the streets. Light flickered on and off in offices and in lamps, and there was a hush of paper blown across street corners. Batman smiled morosely. Gotham's last night in existence, and it spent it like it always had. Nothing had changed.

The vigilante looked up when there was a hissing inside the ground. Slowly, blue light began to build in the glass panels in the cannon's side, first a faint cyan and then slowly building into a burning indigo. He couldn't believe it. Alkahest wasn't waiting. He hadn't put a timer or delayed things a little more for taunts and minor cruelties. He was taking care of things in the instant.

Since when were Gotham villains so efficient?

Batman looked at his wrists, free, proof Alkahest had underestimated him. He was weak, yes. The odds were against them, yes. The world was against them, yes. But he couldn't allow this. He was not going to stand by and watch, no matter how badly he was beaten. It would take more than that, far more to bring him down. He looked to the side, hoped the Joker would stay out of his way just this once.

From across the platform, wind billowing around his green hair like seaweed in the tide, the Joker was smiling. It was a different smile than usual, though. It wasn't the usual twisted, cackling sneer of a madman. Whatever emotion lay behind those crimson lips, it was lucid, and knowing, and in some small, minor way, it was kind.

There was something in the madman's hand, smooth and shiny, though one had to wonder what it was when the duplicates had taken all of their weapons.

They stood across each other in silence for a time, ignored by the entire universe. Batman's cape billowed about him like a million dark wings, and the Joker's coat flapped this way and that, turning him an array of colours as he both appeared and disappeared between purple like the sunset and indigo like the dawn.

"How does it feel?" said Alkahest, already claiming his triumph as the cannon began to build a ball of energy about its end. "To experience your last night on earth?"

The vigilante didn't care about what Alkahest had to say. He didn't like clowns expression. There was something about it, something terribly familiar and strange, that made the ends of his fingers shake. For a moment there, the Joker almost looked human. To someone like him, it was synonymous with becoming mortal.

And yet, he realized that too late. Probably because it was something that he hadn't wanted to know.

"Apologies, Batman," said the Joker. Batman could barely hear him over the howling wind and the whispering city, and yet it was there, indisputable. "It seems as though this time it is I who must tell you to stay behind."

And then the Joker stepped forward into the blue light of the cannon, grinning as though it was his last day on earth.

…

I'm sorry! For anyone who still cares about the existence of this fic, please, please, please forgive me for taking so long. Also, while you're at it, thank wbss21, who actively encouraged me to finish in these troubled times. I probably wouldn't have gotten off my bloody butt and gotten to work if it wasn't for that, and may very well have abandoned writing this without a second thought.

Also, the song Twist is singing is called 'low spark of highheeled boys'. I say this because when I typed in the only line of lyrics I can remember (we were children once, playing with toys) into google so I could find the rest of them, the fifth link down was for 'Batman: the musical'. It seemed like a sign.

Okay, I will finish this. Once again, this was supposed to be the last chapter, but I stalled near the end and…well, I decided to at least put something out. But I'm determined. And again, I'm sorry, and I really appreciate all the people who've supported this fic. You guys are indisputably awesome.


	9. Chapter 9

He couldn't move.

It was pathetic, but it was true.

He couldn't even open his mouth long enough to tell the Joker not to go.

Batman, the man who always had a plan B, who could always get out, who could always swoop in from the worst of situations and raze everything in his path, was petrified. He didn't know why, but as the Joker went, he felt as though the man was moving too fast for him to catch up. Long, fragile limbs threatening to snap in two every time the man took a step, white, white skin causing him to be devoured between the blue light and the moon—like a doll with the seams coming undone, before his very eyes, Batman could see the mad man disappearing.

Maybe it had always been that way, and maybe not realizing it had always been naïve, but this time he couldn't ignore it. The Ace of Knaves was once again one step ahead of him, finally stepping over the ledge they'd been walking towards all along. And he did it with a smile and a wave, as though he knew he was never coming back.

He looked at the Joker's hand, saw the steely glint of whatever object he hid tight within his fist, wanting to know what, if anything, could help. When the Joker was all but standing in front of the duplicates, who all gazed back in morbid, pitying amusement, it suddenly struck him. The smoke bomb. He'd forgotten that he'd never had the chance to use it. How had the Joker even gotten the thing? Had it been dropped? Had he pickpocketed it off Batman's belt? But more than that, how had Alkahest not noticed it? It wasn't destructive, it wasn't even a weapon, but Alkahest wasn't an idiot. He would have taken anything from them that had even the slimmest possibility tipping things in their favour.

It was then he looked at the Joker's feet and had to wonder how he hadn't noticed the drops of blood making a trail behind him. How he'd neglected to see the faint red glisten of the black stain across the Joker's waistcoat. How, when they'd both been beaten back and forth like ragdolls for what must have been hours, he'd forgotten that the Joker's stitches had yet to heal. And, worse than anything, as he noticed that the blood that dripped onto the cement roof was sliding from the mad man's fingers and off the smoke bomb's surface, he'd forgotten that the Joker was just the type of man who would use that to his advantage.

When had he done it? How long had that wound been bleeding out? How long had he been hiding the smoke bomb underneath his skin?

How long was it before he bled out onto the ground?

"What are you doing?" said Alkahest, not hiding his amusement as the Joker shambled up to him, too weak to hide that he was breaking.

The Joker cocked his head back and grinned, revealing the sweat starting to bead on his forehead.

"Do you mind if I ask you something?" He wiped his sleeve against his face. "You know, last request and all," he said, heaving thick, quaking breaths as he did.

The scientist chuckled and the duplicates rolled their eyes. "Of course," he said. "I don't see why not."

The ace of knaves giggled and thrust his hands into his pockets, hiding the smoke bomb inside.

"Well, alright, see, I've just been thinking," said the Joker, choking on every word, "I was just thinking, you're going to kill us, aren't you?"

"You have a knack for being blunt, don't you?" asked Alkahest in turn, but nodded his head nonetheless.

"And, uh, this is the permanent type of death, right?"

The canon started to hum. There wasn't much time left now.

"I wasn't aware there was another kind," was the reply, and yet his words were dripping with a smooth irony, as though to say 'except when I do it'.

"Well, you see, in concerns to that, I've always wondered, _Alkahest_-" He reached out a quaking hand, continued to smile innocently. His fingers touched the face of one of the duplicates standing just ahead of him, who stared at his hand with a mixture of confusion and disgust. He looked up and saw Alkahest staring oh-so-mightily down on them, counting the seconds with his smile, and in that moment Batman knew exactly what he was thinking. "—what's it like to see a dead body that looks just like you?"  
Mercifully, Batman didn't see what the clown did to the duplicate. All he saw was blood that wasn't the Joker's pouring out onto the cement, saw the duplicate buckle over with his hands over his eyes and red coursing from between his fingers, and then he heard the shriek of pain that followed. Alkahest's eyes widened, the other duplicates spun around in confusion, the Joker snatched the baton from the screaming duplicate's belt, and just like that he was laughing with all his might to the city that was too loud to hear him.

He almost screamed 'you lunatic', only to buckle over in pain when he started to laugh too. It was the only thing he could do. After all, calling a man like that a lunatic was a joke. And that was probably the point. By the time he managed to take a step forward to follow the clown into the blue, his body was rattling and he was laughing so hard he started to cry. He looked ahead of him-and like a fool, the Joker was fending off the duplicates by himself, armed with only a baton and a crazy smile-and he realized with a crashing sensation in his gut that there was nothing he could do.

Above the canon, a ball of light was gathering, slowly growing larger and larger.

"Why?" Alkahest said, the shadows playing across his face slowly turning pitch as he watched the Joker fight. "It didn't have to be like this."

"Au contraire," the Joker cried over the duplicates who, to their horror, were having a hard time keeping him down. "I wouldn't have it any other way!"

There was a cry that rippled through the duplicates when Batman, apparently out of nowhere, rammed into them headlong, knocking at least half of them on their backs. This time, maybe for the first time in his life, he could agree with Joker wholeheartedly. There was no way, not in a million years, that he was going to let this stand. If he was going to go—if either of them was going to go—it would be in a torrent of fire and brimstone like no one in the world had seen. He looked up as he did his best to knock duplicates this way and that, even though at this point his chances of winning in a five-to-one fight was slim to none. The Joker, who looked even paler than usual, skin clammy and eyes hazing over, was giving him a strange, wry look as he clobbered a duplicate in the head. Batman had the awful feeling that it was the same look he'd been giving the Joker all this time.

The clown was caught by his neck, just about to be driven to the ground, but before he dropped out of sight, he winked. Batman glanced at the ball of energy gathering above the cannon, and then saw the smoke bomb, gleaming red in the moonlight, fly into the air. As he reached out to catch it, he wondered why he hadn't realized it before. If they could just disrupt it now before it launched, if they could so much at brush it with their fingertips, it would explode then and there. It would probably even destroy the cannon itself. He strained the length of his arm, reaching out for the orb before it passed by him, and as soon as he had it solidly in his hands, he threw it at the ball of light.

One of the duplicates crashed into him mid jump and sent them both sprawling half way across the roof, but Batman didn't care. He almost smiled—no, it would have been a sneer—when the smoke bomb was mere centimeters from imploding against the ball of energy. For a brief, elated second, he claimed victory.

But then he looked down slightly, and with coal black eyes gleaming cruelly, he saw Alkahest was smiling back.

If it wasn't for the fact, even against the pitch black silhouette, you could see his glassy eyes, Batman would never have though it was Twist. The broken duplicate had been standing at the edge of the building, silent, excluded, just moments before. He'd been so _sure_. So why was he there now, appearing like a ghost out of fog, so high in the air he looked as though he was flying, and looking so unforgivably proud as he reached out and plucked the smoke bomb from the air.

It happened in a moment.

The vigilante blanched as his back scraped against the ground and he felt something snap inside him. The duplicates had time to cast him mocking glances from between their swollen eyelids, and several of them stood as though triumphant. Alkahest leaned his head back, returned the expression of the moon, finding some twisted sort of peace. Face down on the ground, too-green hair obscuring too-red lips, the Joker tried to pull himself together. On shaking arms he pushed himself away from the cement, blood scrawling circles beneath his head. The wind whispered, and drew back the Joker's hair, revealing eyes narrowed in laughter.

It happened in a moment.

Alfred had told him, once, fiddling with a busted light bulb in the kitchen, that part of what made jokes funny was the surprise. Sometimes, it was the not knowing that made things interesting. That was probably why Batman would never have found this funny. The Joker had been right. He'd known all along that there was only one way for this to end—they'd both known all along. It just hadn't been the end he'd been hoping for, even knowing he should never have hoped for an end at all. But of all the ever-afters in the world, why did he have to stumble upon this one?

The smokebomb was just bait. They could have thrown anything, and the result would have been the same. Twist would always have caught it, and for a split second, he would just be hanging there, haloed by the light. It had been stupid to think otherwise. He, after all, was one of those people who would never play a card unless it was an ace. And he'd been hiding a whole deck of them up his sleeve.

When the Joker threw himself at Twist with a strength those pale, frail limbs shouldn't have had, he wanted to scream. He only realized later, while coughing blood from his swollen, scratchy throat onto the asphalt, that he had been screaming the whole time. But he hadn't heard himself beneath the hum and the wind and the city and sky and the Joker bursting into laughter just as he and the broken duplicate hurtled into the ball of blue, tearing up at the hilarity of the grand, ultimate, show-stopping punch line that was his own.

When his voice must have finally gone hoarse, when the humming stopped and was replaced with a shrill shriek, Batman looked down, saw the scientist staring above him just before Twist's back met with the ethereal indigo, and a part of him just had to smile.

Alkahest's expression was priceless.

Batman hated clichés. Still, maybe it wasn't too much of a cliché if what people kept telling you all your life turned out to be true-maybe this was what they meant when they talked about having one's life flash before their eyes.

Seeing the Joker for the first time on a news broadcast, along with every other person in Gotham, happily oblivious to the fact that broadcast was their first step onto a dance floor they had yet to get off of. Beating him again and again and again, almost to the point he didn't want to anymore, except he did want to. Moving like a shadow through the halls of Arkham, sometimes with the madman already flopped over his shoulder, or on the other side of a cage, or on the opposite end of a table, looking at Batman with a long, indulgent stare. Standing in the rain, green hair plastered to white skin, dark cowl slick and black cape billowing, laughing, laughing, laughing, as sirens howled in the distance. Knowing they were getting closer to the end…

He closed his eyes.

The flash was certainly brilliant.

For what could have been forever, there was no sound. Even with his eyes squeezed shut, the sheer, sun-like brightness that enveloped him ate through his eyelids and bleached his vision white. Pitch-black shapes lingered around him, completely still, shadows trying to claw away from the explosion only to be incinerated by it when they strayed too far. All but blind, hearing nothing, feeling nothing, Batman felt as though he'd disappeared.

As he gazed out into the empty plane, white as a blizzard and cold as the snow, he realized something. For a frantic moment, he searched for the Joker, wondering where he'd lost him now. His chest tightened when it came to him in a marvelous cascade of sound. For the first time in what could have been a hundred years, he was utterly alone.

The windows of every building shattered and the glass fell to the street like shining confetti. Below, car alarms blared and people screamed in horror as they were first knocked off their feet by the shockwave and then showered with glass. The vigilante snarled as the implosion hurled him off the building, and he only narrowly avoided falling to his death by grabbing hold of the edge of with one hand. His eyes shot up, and he saw the cannon launching a single beam of light up into the sky and into the ground, trying to spear both heaven and hell. Still latched beneath it, somehow still alive, Alkahest roared with pain, and it took Batman a little while to realize that the shadows playing across his face seemed so dark because they were actually layers of charred skin. For a sadistic moment, he was glad. Let him suffer, he thought. Let him die. It was the least he could do for the world. And yet…

The vigilante snarled, didn't want to let his instincts get the better of him, but he was fighting a losing battle. Before he knew it he was running towards Alkahest, leaping over cinder-shapes that had once been duplicates and doing a countdown in his head.

He wasn't going to the bastard perish quite that easily.

"No! No! No!" the scientist shrieked as Batman drew near and fissures started to appear in the floor. Blood sliding over his twisted lips, one eye already burnt from black to white, he still managed to struggle against the vigilante as he jumped onto the device he'd attached himself to, and started to yank him out.

"You can't!" cried Alkahest, hitting his arms against Batman's face and chest as soon as they were free, leaving smears of blood and burnt skin all over his chest plate and cowl. "You can't!"

"Quiet!" shouted Batman, and his voice was mangled and coarse as the groan of the building breaking into pieces. He braced himself when the canon's beam finally died out, and the roof ran out of strength. "I have to save you!" He snatched Alkahest by the torso and yanked him up, narrowly escaping the weapon moments before it went crashing through the floor along with along everything around it. "I don't have a choice anymore!"

The scientist wailed in his ear and flailed in his arms as he took a wild leap across the cement and managed to scramble onto a section that was only just beginning to crumble. The vigilante let out a hiss as his footing fell out from under him while he tried to run, and just like that he and Alkahest were falling through the air. He reached behind him and clutched blindly for his cape, spreading it out behind him, and prayed. It stiffened just before they hit the ground, and they were sent spiraling upwards, narrowly avoiding the rocks that tumbled down all around them. Stones knocked his head and bounced off his back, but he knew he couldn't fall. Not now. He reached out, grasped blindly for something to push himself off as they soared towards the building's only remaining wall. He gritted his teeth, Alkahest's nails raked his chin, and in the split second before they were standing on midair, he pressed his heels against the ledge and took a blind leap into the darkness.

The cape closed just as they toppled onto the roof of the next building over, and Alkahest's lab collapsed into a plume of fire and smoke, roaring like a dying beast. They landed one on top of the other, but Alkahest shoved Batman away as soon as he could and tried to make a dash for the building's edge. He wasn't half way there before Batman beat him to it, and stood before him like a barrier.

"No!" Alkahest cried, trying to push past Batman, trying to escape back towards all he'd worked so hard for. Or at least to join it in ruins. "Isabelle's still in there!" His shrieks grew desperate when he realized no one was going to let him save her, and then bit by bit, tears began to brim within his frigid eyes as he realized it: there was nothing he could do.

Just like Batman, he was now standing in the world alone.

He tumbled onto his knees before the man in black, sobbing with so many different types of pain you could hear his heart was breaking. He clawed desperately at nothing, and grasped at something that wasn't even there, charred hands seeping red as he did.

"Murderer!" he choked. "Murderer…!"

A hushing sound swelled in the streets.

"If I'm a murderer…" whispered Batman, feeling nothing for the duplicates, or Isabelle, or Gotham. The only bitterness he had was for the one loss that should have counted the least. Even with Alkahest collapsed by his feet, sobbing and pulling at his legs like a spoiled child, crushed by the weight of his own misery, he felt nothing for the man but disgust. "…then what are you?"

Behind him, the building rumbled as the last of it fell apart, and the wind howled through it as though it were crying, "_No_."

Slowly, the crescent moon disappeared behind the clouds, swallowed up, and now unsmiling.

"_No_."

…

Submitting this chapter, I don't even know what to say. The first thing that comes to mind, though, is thanks, to everyone who read. I really appreciate it, with all my heart, because no one asked you to read, but you did it anyway.

It's not quite the end yet, though. I think I'm going to write a short epilogue to wrap things up, but at the heart of it, I've done what I came here to do.

And really, I don't think I can say it enough: thank you.


	10. Epilogue

For the last few months, Gotham had been silent.

Every siren had a numbing edge, every explosion was dull as the murmur of a dying heart.

Alkahest was in Arkham now, a mess of scar tissue and never-closing wounds, who stayed silent and curled up in the corner until he was spoken to. And then, looking up with cloudy eyes, grinning with those twisted lips that were all Glasgow scars, he would laugh. The last time he'd seen Batman, a look of knowing had seeped into his black and white eyes that he'd not had since their battle all the way back in Brewster. He leaned his head back against a wall, and instead of bursting into raucous laughter, he'd simply smirked. Smiling so mightily just like he had on that night.

"You've seemed different, lately," he said with a voice that was permanently choking on smoke. He shifted faintly and wrapped his arms around his chest, hiding the thick bandages that were wrapped around his wrists. "Is there something wrong?"

Batman gave him a frigid look.

"I'm only going through the motions," he breathed. "Nothing else."

"You're colder than I thought," said Alkahest. "I was sure that maybe you felt guilty."

The vigilante narrowed his eyes. "Guilty about what?"

"You can't guess?" the scientist snickered. "Guilty from letting me live. And guilty from letting him di-"

Alkahest all but opened his arms for Batman as he descended upon him. Though he wanted to, in the end, he didn't kill the man. He left the cage shaking, blood on his gauntlets, breaths deep and quivering. He didn't wait to hear Alkahest's enraged shriek as he woke up in his own blood, ribs snapped in two and face bruised even further beyond recognition, only to find out that once again, he was still alive. He couldn't be with her.

Everyone had rejoiced. He remembered how Gordon almost started to cry when he told him. He remembered how they'd been tears of joy. Batman had to ask himself why, when he saw that, he was closer to hitting Gordon than he'd ever been to any two-bit scum on Gotham's streets. He'd had to take a deep breath, keep his face stoic as he possibly could. He even faked a laugh. It was, after all, the least he could for the city he'd betrayed.

Alfred's face had stayed carefully neutral as he watched the news broadcast that announced it through the grinning lips of some perky, near-adolescent woman who'd probably never had the decency to even look that man in the face before he'd gone. Bruce had felt his friend look down at him where he was hunched on the sofa.

Alfred had sighed deeply, then reached down and put his hand on the vigilante's shoulder.

"It's for the best, Master Wayne."

That was the worst part. It _was_ for the best, wasn't it? It wasn't as though the clown had been doing anyone any favours by living. It wasn't even as though he'd considered his own life anything more than a joke, and an unfunny one at that. He'd just been a mistake; one of those grand, massive, awesome mistakes that knew nothing of limitations. The type that went away just as fantastically as it came in. And he'd certainly done that, hadn't he? Batman got a shortlived chuckle out of it whenever he thought about it. They'd destroyed half that neighborhood during the fight with Multiply, and what was worse, the crater left behind kept getting thinner and thinner near the edges, looking like a grin. Decidedly, it would take a small fortune to rebuild, and so, for several more months at least, the Joker was still causing Gotham trouble from beyond the grave. And at the end of those few months, when they'd filled in that crater in the ground that reminded Gotham of his smile, and all the houses had been rebuilt, and when people stopped talking about the man who only ever knew laughter, he'd be gone forever.

Batman drifted quietly down the streets that night, masquerading in a suit and tie as Bruce Wayne. For one night, he'd let the city run amok, just so he could hear it loud and clear, because at this point the noise was just too much to bear. He hadn't bothered asking out one of his extensive list of paramours on his stroll because frankly he wanted to be alone, and oddly, he felt far more lonesome in the city than his mansion. He found himself disappearing and reappearing under streetlights and starlight, into the nighttime that was his second skin, then back into the world that knew nothing of darkness. After maybe an hour of walking, just when the chill was beginning to leak through his overcoat, he found himself standing at a bus stop in front of one of Gotham's many twisted hospitals. There were only a handful of people standing under the streetlamp, hands shoved in pockets and looking straight ahead. A man in a dark fedora with a scarf he had pulled up to his nose, a blonde woman in a black coat and red dress, a teenager in a cap and hoodie, an aged woman with a child clinging to her leg, and businessman who kept checking his watch every few second. He slowed to a stop at the fringe of the little group, feeling strangely out of place just on the outskirts of the light. Their soft, half-there speech merged into a hum, drowning out his breathing and his thoughts. He drifted on the lull, then slowly sunk down, down into its depths, and for a moment he fell asleep standing up, as he was often prone to do.  
"Excuse me."

Bruce opened his eyes, and found the man in the fedora leaning backwards out the bus, waving at him with a gloved hand.

"Are you alright there?" he said. "The bus is about to go."

The millionaire blinked, not really understanding it was him the man was talking to. When it finally sunk in, he bowed his head.

"Thank you," he murmured, and made his way beneath the streetlamp and into the neon lights of the bus.

"No trouble," said the man in the fedora. Though you couldn't see his mouth, you could see in his pale green eyes that he was smiling.

It was difficult finding change to pay the fare with—in the end, he was just barely able to scrape up enough that the driver didn't kick him off for stalling. He slid into a seat with its back to the wall, hunched his shoulders and breathed into his palms. He couldn't remember the last time he'd felt the cold like this.

"Are you alright?" Bruce looked up to find the man in the fedora speaking to him again. The blonde woman sitting beside him giggled and batted her blue eyes at Bruce when he glanced her. "You look a bit down in the dumps."

Again, the man in the fedora's voice was just a drone in the back of his head, sitting on the surface of his thoughts and failing to get it. He shook himself when the man furrowed his eyebrows at him, jolting himself to attention.

"I'm fine," he said. "It's just been a difficult few months is all."

"Ohh, is that right?" said the man, nodding as though he understood. He rubbed his hands together, as though doing it would actually get the heat through his gloves. "I'm not surprised. Troubled times like these, a man of your stature must have a lot to deal with."

Bruce smiled wryly when the businessman looked up suddenly and didn't recognize him.

"It doesn't help," the man admitted with a shrug.

The bus stopped and the woman with the child got off. The man in the fedora watched them with quiet, glinting eyes, before his eyes fell back on Bruce.

"It's been hard for all of us, though." The man leaned back, and the light fell on his nose, illuminating pale skin. He chuckled faintly when the woman in the red dress linked her arm with his, and she beamed when he did nothing to stop her. "I mean, in all seriousness, when is the world not just trying to shove us in a ditch? I've had a difficult few months myself."

"My poor, sweet puddin' just got out of hospital," the blonde woman explained with high, sugary voice. "It took a while, but he's all better now." She nuzzled her head against the man's shoulder. "Ain't that right, Puddin'?"

"Hush now, sweetums, I'm talking now," said the man in the fedora, pressing his finger playfully against her lips. Those bright eyes of his were virtually glowing when he turned to the vigilante again. "Times get tough. That's just how this city operates. But don't worry." He looked out the window, took in a thick, easy breath. "Tonight's a good night-things will all start looking up soon." The man chuckled gently, and the sound almost seemed familiar to Bruce before it just became just another noise in the raucous city. "I'm sure of it."

The bus chimed and Bruce looked up to find he had no idea where it had taken him. He laughed morosely and stood up, gesturing for the driver not to take off before he was out in the streets again.

"I should be getting off here," he said to the man and the woman.

"Is that right?" said the pale man. He laughed softly and his seat creaked. The blonde giggling gently as she followed suite blonde giggled gently and waved at Bruce with the tips of her fingertips, and the man in the fedora reached out and curled his hand about them. "Well, it was nice talking to you. Have a good evening."

"You too." Not looking forward to the cold but not having anywhere else to go, the vigilante stepped out onto the asphalt and into the howl of the wind. The bus hissed again, closing its doors to Bruce, and began to head away down the road, out to where the streetlights and starlight didn't reach. The vigilante just watched it go. He would admit to being surprised when it stopped again, less than a block away. He tilted his head as it lowered gently on its big, black wheels, and a dark form emerged from the door, running down towards him. He tilted his head upon seeing the man in the fedora moving briskly towards him, eyes shining just like those stars.

"You dropped your scarf," said the man, raising the article in question above his head. His breaths were thin and weak, as though he was a smoker. "Wouldn't want to leave without that in this weather, would you?"

"Oh," said Bruce, startled that he hadn't noticed sooner. He smiled when he got the scarf in his hands, and oddly, it was one of those genuine smiles that had been growing so rare lately. "Yes, you're right about that. I'd freeze to death."

The man chuckled, already back on his way to the bus, which was churning steam into the cold. "It seems me helping you out is becoming a trend already."

"Yes," the vigilante laughed in turn. "Thanks for keeping me in check in these troubled times."

The man nodded, and standing right beside the bus, he suddenly looked so far away. "Not a problem, Brewster."

Bruce frowned and straightened up upon hearing the strange corruption of his name.

"It's Bruce," he called across the street.

There was a pause as the man tilted his head at Bruce bemusedly, eyes bright with silent laughter, and then he pulled himself into the bus and disappeared.

Bruce watched it go as he started to wrap his scarf back around his neck, then stopped when something fell loose. Perturbed, he picked it up from the dirty ground and then, breathing in the cold autumn air, he couldn't move.

It had been a shirt, once. It was charred in many places, and even what was intact could not have been repaired by the finest seamstress in the world. However, what remained that wasn't torn and burnt and beaten beyond all recognition, without any question in the world, was indigo. Bruce turned it over in his hands several times, rubbed his fingers on the fibers, slid their tips through the holes. He breathed in and smelt smoke and blood and laughter in every thread. He twisted it in his hands, and just before it snapped, he let it go. He held it, blown this way and that by lonely wind, too frozen down inside to shiver, and then he rolled it in a ball and shoved it in his pocket.

In no rush to be anywhere, he knotted the scarf around his neck while he watched the bus lights go. He put his hands in his coat, keeping out the quiet and the cold. Slowly, Bruce tilted back his head, wanting to look up. When he saw it fully, he couldn't help but smile at the sky.

"Funny," he said. He exhaled a breath, mist forming on his lips, and then walked out into the frigid city, bathed in the light of the laughing moon.

…

…

Wow, so that marks the end of an era. The first fanfiction I ever finished, and it gives me new hope that I'm not as useless as I would have thought. Thank you to everyone who cared that I took this to the end, especially wbss21, who not only left me extensive and thorough critiques that boosted my ego massively, but was also sure to encourage me to finish in times when it seemed like I wouldn't and was great for bragging about to my friends. But seriously, I'm so glad for every one of my readers, even the ones that weren't always vocal, and very much so to those that were. Perhaps, in future, I'll write another Batman fic. If that happens, here's to another one.

-the beldam


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